Major MMO Publishers Sued For Patent Infringement 232
GameboyRMH writes "The Boston Globe reports that major MMO publishers (Blizzard, Turbine, SOE, NCSoft, and Jagex) are being sued by Paltalk, which holds a patent on 'sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment' — a patent that would seem to apply to any multiplayer game played between multiple systems, at the very least. Paltalk has already received an out-of-court settlement from Microsoft earlier this year in relation to a lawsuit over the Halo games. If Microsoft can't fend off Paltalk's legal attacks, the odds don't look good for their latest group of targets."
Re:You're damn right it is too broad (Score:3, Interesting)
The good thing is that Blizzard should have enough resources to blow that patent out of the water.
And Microsoft didn't?
One would assume that M$ (only using the $ for relevance) found that it would be simpler and cheaper to just pay a (probably) small fee than spend years in court al la SCO. Therefore Blizzard probably would do the same, although this isn't core business to Microsoft but *is* to Blizzard so they might want to defend.
Perhaps it's because companies don't fight these claims often enough, that software patents continue to eat up our sanity.
Prior Art : MUD, BBS Doors, ... ? (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't check the date of the pattent, but it may be interresting to check if MUD preclude this patent... Another kind of program that may preclude is some BBS doors and some programs that may have existed during the Spectrum/Commodore/Amstrad/... time
Re:My first thought (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember pulling all-nighters in college, and I specifically remember the first time we successfully connected using the commandline client and moved a character from X,Y to X,Y+1, thus validating the movement routines - there were a lot of firsts for us back in that code: socket programming (thankyou Stevens), bitfields in structures, function pointer tables, etc. To see it all work at 3:00 am was a major high. Kid's stuff today, of course
Anyway, much as I'd love to think of myself as a prodigy, it seems this patent falls afoul of the obvious clause, and if blizzard or whomever want to get in touch for some patent-busting source code, just feel free
Simon
Obviously IANAL or a USian (Score:3, Interesting)
I was under the impression that patents are awarded federally, however it seems that the actions are being taken at a very specific locality which is widely considered more sympathetic than everywhere else, rather than a national or federal court.
This seems very strange to me, surely the legal position on a federal issue should be consistent across the nation. Or the verdicts across low level courts should be able to be 'moderated'.
Re:Obviously IANAL or a USian (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Doom multiplayer video came out in 1993 (Score:1, Interesting)
How about IRC?
Re:Only in Shitmerica. (Score:3, Interesting)
Assholes rule over idiots, it always has been that way and always will be. The only way to make a better society is to educate people to the point where they are capable of telling the difference between assholes, idiots, and smart well intentioned people.
Re:Obviously IANAL or a USian (Score:3, Interesting)
PS I'm not saying that I beleive a single system should entriely govern 300 million people but if something is determined at the national level then the application of that should be consistent across the nation. Impossible I know but it seems this place is blatantly out of line with the rest of the country, perhaps even trying to be so. The federal authorities should at least be trying to prevent what we call here in Britain "a postcode lottery".
Re:My first thought (Score:3, Interesting)
Patent 5822523, summarised:
The number of communications required to keep a game with N players updated with each other is O(N!). This patent suggests a method by which the communications are sent to a central server, with the server sending regular updates to each player of all the actions taken by the other N-1 players.
So far it sounds exactly like how a MUD works.
The server includes the ability for clients to become part of a "group" which further limits the amount of communication required to something less than O(N). The patent attempts to claim the Nagle algorithm as a unique invention (ie: hold on to outgoing messages for a short time to potentially squeeze more data into one packet).
"Group" in this context would be similar to "instance" in World of Warcraft or "grid" in EVE Online.
I'm not familiar with WoW or EVE terminology, but is there any chance that this might be similar to a "room" in a MUD?
Re:Jagex are based in the UK, can they still be su (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me that this patent completely fails the obviousness test with MMOs are VR Worlds.
Here's hoping the judge smacks them down.