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."
Uh... Nethack anyone (Score:2)
Seriously. The amount of prior art on this one is more than enough to keep these trolls at bay.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Damn it feels so good to be thousands of miles away from the US.
However, i hope that you enrich your laws sometime soon with "patents can be ignored if their build-up is just plain stupid blackmail"
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
digital TV? (Score:4, Funny)
'sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment'
Well there goes digital TV then....
Is a web page a digital environment? (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't they try to sue bittorrent too? Or mirroring websites. Or Google for having a hundreds of servers to share the load of loading a website.
Too broad a patent.
Jagex? Really? (Score:2)
Sadly its because of patent trolling, Oh well.
Somebody find the claims of the patent (Score:2)
That way, there's actually something substantive to discuss.
Re: (Score:2)
General rule of thumb: (Score:2)
When you can find prior art in the Jargon File, your patent is stupid.
Not so fast... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sometimes it's cheaper to just pay off the plaintiff than to litigate. Blizzard has deeeeeeeeeeep pockets and has a reason to fight this. Let's see where this goes.
Re: (Score:2)
And it gives the plaintiff the money to also sue your competition.
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
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: (Score:3, Informative)
The vast majority of civil cases are carried out through state courts. Each state has slightly different protocols and procedures. And if the order of a lower court is inconsistent with federal law, it is possible to bring a case up to a higher court. But this costs additional time and money.
In many ways the US is still a confederation of small pseudo-nations, although that has been changing rapidly for the past 100 years.
Also it's a matter of perspective, to me it would be strange for a single system to ce
Re: (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 i
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Each District (and Circuit) has procedural rules, which may or may not be favourable to the conduct of certain types of cases
Thanks, I think I see.
Is this just for civil proceedings or criminal ones? It just seems to me to be inherently unjust to have the outcome of a case be literally influenced by the location of the proceedings.
Does MS actually WANT to "fend off"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft might not want to "fend off" some legal attacks... by paying a settlement, which they can easily do, they give the trolls the means to attack others who might NOT be able to afford a settlement, thus clearing the battlefield, err, market, for Microsoft's products.
I have no idea if this applies here, but this isn't cynicism... Corporations DO think this way. There is no morality involved, only the logic of competition in the markets, and there are no questions of legality, only those of court and settlement costs vs potential profits.
Re: (Score:2)
Settlement's often the right choice in this scenario. Settle, and the matter is dropped (usually) without prejudice, giving you the chance to invalidate their case when you're better-prepared. Take it to court and you're facing off on their terms. They've got a specific case made up, you're the respondent who has to pull things together in a time limit. You may wind up with a precident-setting court decision against you, which leaves you worse off than when you started, and makes it easier for the winning p
Patents and overseas developers. (Score:2)
Can anyone tell me what effect the stupid US software patents system would have on overseas developers where there is no software patent law?
If an MMO developer like Blizzard were based in Europe could they basically tell them to fo, or would they still be able to bring a case and prevent them accepting paying customers from the US?
Clearly this kind of suit severely impacts innovation- what indie would dare try and develop and online game if they're at risk of being sued or forced to settle such that they c
Re: (Score:2)
Can anyone tell me what effect the stupid US software patents system would have on overseas developers where there is no software patent law?
If anything, they create a strain on the overseas countries' immigration systems.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm kind of intrigued to know how it effects someone selling software they've developed and sell online. If you sell a product online that's fine in all countries except say the US because of patent infringement there, then how exactly would the patent holder take action? As I understand it, you wouldn't have to put any technical measures in place to block US citizens because the only onus on you would be to satisfy the laws of your country, not pander to the laws of every country in the world from which so
Re: (Score:2)
If you develop in Europe and sell in US, you are impacted by US patent laws.
Yes. But if I host a server in the UK, and let anyone anywhere in the world pay money and download software from it, am I selling in the US (and hence liable for patent infringement)? Or am I selling in the UK, and my US-based customers are importing into the US (and hence the customers are liable for any patent infringement, not me)?
There is prior art (Score:2)
Obviously everyone has forgotten DECWARS, MUD1, Island of Kesmai, etc.
The patent is invalid. That Microsoft chose to "settle for an undisclosed sum" according to TFA (because of HALO) only encourages these idiots - in fact, that's probably what Microsoft wanted... it takes the heat off them and puts it on the other guys.
When oh when will the USPTO learn how evil software patents can be, especially vague ones like this.
interesting! (Score:2)
I am looking forward to seeing how this is going to pan out, sure MS probably gave in, because they helped push the patent, so they want to help enforce it...even though there is no proof for the public of this fact. I am sure that there is a sort of under the table dealing here, where MS will end up owning this patent, and being that it was enforced somehow through misdirection on their own part, and the likes of blizzard etc..would follow, the future of this type of game, will be great for MS!
I hope the l
I blame the examiner (Score:2)
Here's an idea on fixing the system... (Score:2)
It strikes me that this is yet another case of "company buys patent from somebody else, company tries to sue people with their new patent." It really is quite abusive, seeing as patents are there to reward innovation by inventors, but I think I've figured out a simple and elegant way to prevent this sort of thing.
Make patents non-transferable.
So, the only person or organization who can sue somebody for patent infringement is the one who actually invented the thing. That might not knock out every patent tr
SIMNET (Score:2)
If I were looking for prior art on this one I would look at SIMNET (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIMNET) I would look at the systems leading up to it and the follow on systems. DARPA was way out in the lead pushing for distributed VR systems in the '80s and early '90s.
OTOH, I did skim the patent and it looks like they are talking about sending packets at fixed time intervals. The packets would contain all the little messages generated for the recipient during that time interval. That is a clever idea. Almos
TFS misleads on what the patents cover, as usual (Score:2)
Actually, no. TFA says that Paltalk is suing based on two patents (not one) which, according to TFA relate to "technologies for sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment." TFA does not say Paltalk has a patent on "s
Atari Jaglink (Score:2)
Re:My first thought (Score:5, Funny)
Re:My first thought (Score:5, Informative)
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. 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.
If someone can explain how this is not an obvious solution to the problem, as evidenced by the parallel development of this technology by every MMO out there, I'd love to hear it.
Re:My first thought (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.
While there have been "mail" games running through mailing lists for a while, MUDs would be a much more pertinent comparison. There have been MUD servers pretty much since someone figured out that you could telnet to any port and stick a server that did silly things on there (or in other words, since the 70s). Everybody who was around in the 70s or 80s had a few MUD accounts, if only to see what all the fuss was about.
It should be trivial to shoot this one down in flames (which assumes the lawyer understand
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Informative)
If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.
Actually, it's not *basically* the same. It's *exactly* the same. Almost every claim has prior art in standard mailing list management software that has existed practically forever.
I was thinking IRC + Nagle's algorithm as prior art, but I think you've hit the nail on the head there!
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (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: (Score:2)
This doesn't actually mean a game instance or a dungeon instance. This means the players join a group from a network perspective.
The end result is that I join an area and after joining I share to all other clients that join the same area. Guess what, that's not how the mmo's do it because it introduces cheating and potential for me to disrupt another person's gameplay.
I'm pretty sure that Torrents would have been a better goal for this a-hole.
Re: (Score:2)
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?
Yes. Or a channel in IRC (as the patent isn't phrased in terms of a game at all, but a general communication system).
The only thing is, every claim in it depends on updates from multiple sources being batched up and sent to clients in a single packet. I don't know enough about MUD software to be sure this was done. Nagle's algorithm makes it an obvious thing to do, and means it must have
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.
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Insightful)
All Software patents are obvious on some level. I still think software shouldn't be patentable, only copyrightable.
I'm a developer, and I still feel as though writing a program is similar to writing a book in that regard. If you allowed publishers to patent ideas for books and methods for main characters to traverse through the story, you'd basically hit the same point we are in software patents. Dragons would be patented to someone, Mystery Novels would be patented to someone else...
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Informative)
And in a good example of previous art, MANY years ago, I used a chat program called "powwow" (yes, created by the Native American community), that not only allowed group interactions, but, had shared games, and the ability to surf the Net as a group (one URL click would take the entire group to that website) and many other group interactions.
Since this pedated paltalk, I suspect that the awards should go someplace BESIDES into their pocket.
here are some comments about Powwow....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltalk
Re:My first thought (Score:4, Funny)
Since this pedated paltalk, [...]
Pedated?
Did it molest paltalk when it was young?
Not prior art (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Sounds like IRC then?
Re:Not prior art (Score:5, Informative)
I remember several discussions among writers of the early MUDs (about 1990 or so... on USENET?) that involved aggregation of character data between multiple servers and allowing players to move from one "world" to the next. Some of this was simply copying character data, but it also involved direct links between servers... where players moving from one "room" to the next could switch to a different server and have it appear seamless to somebody playing within the MUD.
Obviously this was for MUD servers of the same "class" where data would be shared, but the data sharing concepts were discussed including IP (internet protocol) packet standards that would be used for sharing user data and even "world" data between servers.
I do think some prior art could be pulled up from these discussions, and there certainly is nothing that current MMORPGs provide other than graphics that hasn't already been done in abundance more than two decades ago with the old text-based MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. If anything, those experiments are still ahead of the game other than providing a snazzy client interface. Unless it is a patent on how to efficiently render 3D graphics on extremely low bandwidth, I don't see how there could be anything genuinely novel that isn't nearly 20 years old or much older anyway.
FYI, the DIKU MUD, while an early pioneer, wasn't the first. Multiplayer virtual combat games go back to at least 1980, and the real classic, ADVENT (Will Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure) came out in 1976... and was the real inspiration for most subsequent MUDs even if it wasn't necessarily "multi-player". The desire to make it multi-player, however, did become something to push people along. There were other multi-player combat games that are of a similar age that had to deal with these issues as well, some of which I did play in the 1970's.
Re: (Score:2)
I recall similar discussions still ongoing in RGMD and other similar newsgroups and mailing lists at the time.
At one point, I'm pretty sure that someone had a working inter-MUD connector going on, but I can't for the life of me recall who or where it might still be found.
Re: (Score:2)
Resolving the problem of latency over low-bandwidth connections was a major research area. Methods for generic data included establishing multiple port connections, data buffer management. For motion, there are techniques of analyzing the time delay and using that to interpolate an estimated motion path - Some games like 'bzflag' estimates motion as a circle of a particular radius - if a connection is lost, the tank just appears to go round in circles. At a higher level, there are methods of managing distri
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Not prior art (Score:5, Funny)
The patent seem to be about reducing network traffic on multi-server systems, and having some way of aggregating messages to groups of clients.
Are you sure it's not about getting large sums of money from other companies without having to do any actual work ?
You're damn right it is too broad (Score:4, Informative)
The good thing is that Blizzard should have enough resources to blow that patent out of the water.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Err... Microsoft coughed up over Halo, and I'd bet MS have more laywers to parachute in than Blizzard could even dream of.
Re:You're damn right it is too broad (Score:4, Insightful)
Just because Microsoft coughed up a settlement doesn't mean that Microsoft doesn't have the resources to beat a lawsuit over the issue. It just means that their bean counters did some math and decided that it would cost less to pay these guys off than it would to fight them. Blizzard may decide to react differently, particularly since their flagship cash cow product is being attacked. We might have seen a different reaction from Microsoft had it been Windows that the lawsuit claimed infringed on their patent.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention, this patent is broad enough to effect every single multiplayer game they might release. Starcraft2, diablo3, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
The issue with most lawsuits is that it doesn't come down to who is right or wrong. It comes down to money.
It costs X to fight it and you may loose and pay Y settlement, and it costs Z to settle.
If X>Z, you settle. If the probability of loosing is high, that makes you more likely to settle, but it is not as large a concern for large corporations as people believe.
Granted, that is siimplified but it is more or less how it all goes.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
Blizzard will either roll over for cost's sake, or if suitably threatened, keep this issue in court so long the trolls go bankrupt.
Re: (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.
Re: (Score:2)
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.
I don't think Blizzard has as much stake in defending the validity of software patents in general (unlike MS). And this touches Blizard's flagship product. And Blizzard seems like mostly pretty good guys, so they might want to fight this just on principle.
Perhaps it's because companies don't fight these claims often enough, that software patents continue to eat up our sanity.
Exactly. That's why I hope Blizzard fights this with all they have.
You can't defend against this ... (Score:2)
Obviousness though it should be a defence is abhorred by lawyers for it's complete subjectiveness and has been driven out of the patent system altogether, and to a jury in Texas very little is obvious. Gaming the patent system is about finding problems no one has thought about yet but which will become relevant soon, the solutions will be trivial but because the problem is not one currently relevant no one will describe the solutions ... the solutions will thus be novel, and that's all the justice system ca
Anything major predating Oct 13 1998 .. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
It wouldn't surprise me if Microsoft took the easy way out because it put more strength behind patents. A cry of "look - even we comply with patents, so we must keep them" or something similar.
Re:You're damn right it is too broad (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, that's what I'd expect from MS (Score:2)
Actually, we're talking about the same MS which bankrolled at least a part of SCO's lawsuit against IBM. Including, yes, by buying their bogus protection racket licenses. Funding yet another troll that could hurt their competitors more than it hurts them, is exactly what I'd expect from MS at this point.
Re: (Score:2)
So actually it more or less applies to "real-time" data sharing with lots of hosts. Which does not apply to any of the examples you mentioned...
Such as IRC?
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why so many geeks on Slashdot have no concept how the patent system "works".
I can patent a method of using IRC to arrange the delivery of baked goods and that would be a valid patent (actually, it's probably already patented). The patent would include a vague description of IRC. Geeks would read the patent and say "that's just IRC!!" and get all huffy about it. Well, duh, that's not the point, the point is I figured out a way to use IRC to get you baked goods.
Re: (Score:2)
the point is I figured out a way to use IRC to get you baked goods.
No, you didn't.
I figured a way to use a comunication media to distribute items much before.
My lawyer would be contacting you right now.
Re: (Score:2)
I can patent a method of using IRC to arrange the delivery of baked goods and that would be a valid patent (actually, it's probably already patented).
No idea whether it would be valid legally because the patent office is out with the fairies but it shouldn't be valid. That's just a particular instance of the use of IRC which is a general purpose communication medium. Because it is a general purpose communication medium no patent for a specific instance of that communication should be possible. An "instanc
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I can patent a method of using IRC to arrange the delivery of baked goods and that would be a valid patent (actually, it's probably already patented).
No idea whether it would be valid legally because the patent office is out with the fairies but it shouldn't be valid. That's just a particular instance of the use of IRC which is a general purpose communication medium. Because it is a general purpose communication medium no patent for a specific instance of that communication should be possible. An "instance of" relation not a "use of" relation. An "instance of" relation should never be patentable because there is always prior art.
The patent office, and you to some degree, seem to be confused about the difference between words and ideas (is a file system a database?), whether ideas are the same and different (are two shades of the color orange the same or different?) and whether one idea is contained by another (is using a car to move something different from using a vehicle to move something?). The patent office doesn't seem to understand even simple concepts like Venn diagrams [wikipedia.org] and the fact that words and meanings have varying overlaps and relationships. Specifically, patenting something simply because somebody has renamed and reduced the coverage of an existing concept should not be possible.
---
Every new patent is a new law; another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the wider community.
You're absolutely right. All of those legal scholars, judges, lawyers, etc. who have studied and written about patent law in depth don't understand simple concepts like Venn diagrams. You are clearly the only one who has ever put any real thought into this.
Or not. You know how people complain that patents (and legislation, for that matter) isn't written in plain English? That's because "plain English" is notoriously vague and nuanced. Your examples - two shades of orange, a file system vs. database, using
Re: (Score:2)
Obviousness (Score:2)
You missed his entire point - he wasn't claiming IRC, he was claiming a method of delivering goods. Does IRC deliver baked goods? Then IRC being a 'general purpose communication medium' is irrelevant.
If a method of delivering baked goods using the telephone network was already known, why wouldn't replacing the communication medium with another well-known communication medium be obvious to one skilled in the art?
Re:You're damn right it is too broad (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't understand why so many geeks on Slashdot have no concept how the patent system "works".
I think geeks on Slashdot know all too well how patents work... it is just a concept so alien to their way of thinking that they think the politicians and lawyers who came up with the concept of software patents are the clueless ones here.
Most geeks and in particular software developer geeks come up with novel ideas so quickly and so frequently that they find even taking the time to write up a patent to be something hardly worth the effort and slows their thinking down. How much uncommented/undocumented software do you think exists?
There is also a hacker (both black hat and white hat communities) philosophy of sharing information and techniques... where somebody who comes up with a novel algorithm gains respect within the community by virtue of the prestige for how often that algorithm is copied by everybody else. In other words, software developers are proud if their algorithm (particularly if their name is attacked to it like the LZW algorithm) and it is commonly used. This actually comes from the mathematics community, where mathematical theorems have a similar kind of reception between fellow mathematicians. Unfortunately for hackers and geeks, a good algorithm is seen as a cash cow.
The current patent laws explicitly prohibit patents on mathematical theorems... and in fact the language used is that mathematical formulas are exempt from patent protection. The argument used by software developers is that an algorithm is only a mathematical construct. Unfortunately, almost anything expressed as an algorithm can also be implemented as a representation of digital gates in hardware, so the algorithm can also be turned into a physical device that is tangible and made up of discrete components. That makes it patentable. BTW, the opposite is also true for most digital electronics, where hardware can be described in software... hence programmable logic.
As for the logic of allowing business methods as patentable concepts... I'll leave that to a whole other discussion. That is also something very recent, and IMHO just as harmful to the concept of a patent as software patents. Your description of selling baked goods via IRC is precisely one of these stupid business method patents that have perverted the concept of patents well beyond the initial intentions of the framers of the U.S. Constitution and why patent laws were originally developed.
A device that reproduces sound via recording the noise and allowing it to be played back... that is an invention worthy of a patent. Thomas Edison clearly deserved kudos and the protection for coming up with that idea initially. Patents were intended to protect physical devices from being copied due to the difficulty in doing the engineering and the infrastructure necessary to get those devices produced in the first place, so the government was willing to grant a temporary (read TEMPORARY! ) monopoly over the concept to get the inventor of the idea established in the marketplace and recoup the R&D costs that the copy-cats wouldn't have to deal with. For most software patents, that is hardly the issue at all, and certainly isn't the case with business patents.
Re: (Score:2)
Because it doesn't.
But the cl
Re: (Score:2)
The multicast protocol by itself is sort of prior art.
Not sort of. The patent specifically mentions that multicast is prior art. The patent is claiming an improvement over multicast. Regular multicast would not be an infringement of the patent.
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
Sorta (Score:5, Informative)
As usual, Slashdot's summaries are the "OMG, here's a broad mis-representation of the patent, so we can whine about it" trolling. I swear if someone invented a new clock mechanism, it would come out on Slashdot as "OMG, they're patenting the cog." Because apparently some people just try that hard to belong to a big family of clueless whiners.
Actually searching for HearMe's patents (since TFA mentions that the patent was bought from HearMe) actually shows that they're a bit more speciffic than "showing the same world on two PCs". Not by much, mind you, but still. So the actual debate would be whether it's a multiplayer game, but whether it implements the exact synchronization algorithm described there.
And if you want to help those companies, knowing what they need help with, might help more. And just "it was a multiplayer" game ain't it.
The actual patents that seem even remotely relevant are these:
1. Method and apparatus for loosely synchronizing closed free running raster displays [uspto.gov]
The problem is that I can't see how it even remotely applies to multiplayer games, except via an equivocation fallacy. It's about "seeing the same thing" in a much more literal way: literally seeing not just the same scene, but the exact same image and synchronizing the frames. As in, the VSync signal comes at the same moment.
I don't think any game does that at all.
It includes such tidbits as temporarily changing the video mode to interlaced (which should look the same, according to them -- except to anyone who isn't blind, it isn't), to change the timings on one monitor, then switch back to non-interlaced when the sync signals synchronized with each other.
Again, I don't think any actual game does that. I don't think interlaced modes are even used at all nowadays.
The second problem with it, is that it's been filed on 23 December 1997, i.e., a good 3 months after the launch of Ultima Online. So if they actually want to push the "it's about seeing the same thing" equivocation, it seems to me the defense doesn't even have to go as far back in time as your Xanadu. UO already showed the same thing.
2. Server-group messaging system for interactive applications [uspto.gov]
Basically this one is about this: you have a server and X clients, and all clients are sending packets to all other clients. Think, an IRC channel, basically. So they propose that instead of dumbly routing between clients, the server aggregates the packets and sends the aggregates periodically.
The first problem is that a MMO only does that in a very loose sense. It sends the resulting status, rather than the bundled messages from all other players.
The second problem is that even if they want to push the equivocation that that status processing is a form of aggregation, MUDs already did that. Whenever you entered a room and god a "PrincessLayMe and MrMacho are standing here", it was effectively an aggregate result of the previous movements of the two players.
Of course, this has the caveat that their patent actually mentions aggregating over an interval, and sending the status periodicially, which MUDs did not.
However here comes the third problem: the patent was applied in 1999, a solid two years after UO which _did_ do just that.
Just to clarify (Score:4, Insightful)
Just to clarify, after reading the patents a bit, HearMe does look to me like a bit of a patent troll or potential patent troll. Everything reads like the kind of guess about what a game might need, by someone who never actually programmed a game.
E.g., trying to sychronize the VSync on two computers seems such a profoundly useless and counter-productive thing, that it boggles the mind. Let's just say it would prevent the following 3 people from playing together:
- Tom, who has a 60 Hz TFT
- Dick, who plays on a CRT in 85 Hz
- Harry, who bought one of the new bundles of NVidia 3D glasses and a 120 Hz monitor required for it
It's not just that any synchronization in the sync signal would last exactly one frame, it's that forcing the 3 computers to display the exact same image would prevent Harry from getting any stereoscopic 3D effect. (He needs alternating frames rendered from slightly different view points, which the other two don't and it would make them see double if they did.)
E.g., just collecting and routing aggregates is
1. Useless in that literal form not only for games, but for IM clients too (which seems to be all that HearMe actually did make). If the messages in a chat room are that fast that you gain anything with an aggregation time so small that it's unnoticeable to users, then it'll scroll too fast to read anyway. And if you aggregate over several seconds, it produces abrupt chunks of scrolling that actually are disruptive and annoying.
2. Already done pretty much anyone who ever wrote a batch job that runs periodically. And I'm pretty sure that, for example, that FidoNet already worked that way.
Ah, wait, they have the patent troll "over the internet" clause. And FidoNet wasn't over the Internet. Sorry.
Well, even then I'm pretty sure at least some mail servers and NNTP servers work exactly that way. For a backbone system, the mail or news servers down the line are the "clients", and it aggregates the mails or news items instead of routing each individually to each client.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except that an IRC channel doesn't have clients sending messages directly to each other, they send them to the server which aggregates them and sends the aggregated traffic back for the channels you've joined. An IRC
Re: (Score:2)
However here comes the third problem: the patent was applied in 1999, a solid two years after UO which _did_ do just that.
Feb 1, 1996, actually. It's a continuation of an earlier application, now patent 5,822,523.
Re: (Score:2)
2. Server-group messaging system for interactive applications
Basically this one is about this: you have a server and X clients, and all clients are sending packets to all other clients. Think, an IRC channel, basically. So they propose that instead of dumbly routing between clients, the server aggregates the packets and sends the aggregates periodically.
C.f. Nagle's algorithm [wikipedia.org]. An IRC server running on any TCP/IP stack developed more recently than around 1985 does everything described by claims 1, 2, 3, 4,
Re: (Score:2)
That some of the
Re: (Score:2)
Except you also need to convince the court (Score:2)
Well, for you it may be as simple as that, but you can't go in front of a judge and just say that you don't believe in software patents. So until such time as it changes, looking at exactly what a patent says is actually a pretty good idea. IMHO.
Re: (Score:2)
Now I'm not an attorney, so the finer points of patent law go right over my head.
But if I understand it right, you're essentially saying that one can get a patent, collect license fees, and sue infringers... on something that someone else was doing for years before the patent application. And that seems morally wrong.
I'm not even talking "previous" by a couple of hours, but by a solid two years from UO alone. And indeed UO is only an arbitrary example, whose only merit is its being well known. It wasn't eve
Re:My first thought (Score:5, Funny)
My first thought was this is great anything to force innovation. Something more then the same old, same old in MMO gaming.
But then again sounds a bit broad, as do many a patent these days.
On the other hand, an online game where none of the players would share the same environment would be more challenging !
- So shall we conquer the castle ? You have flaming arrows, right ?
- I'm feeding my pink ponies
- What space station is that castle on again ?
- Has anybody got spare rifle grenades ?
- Wait, we have to act in sync
- Ooops, gotta go, the unicorn is here !
- wait, what ?
- I think a castle just floated by
- floated ? Wait, where are you ?
- It's behind that large asteroid !
- Never mind about the grenades, I found a RPG, let's go !
- Ok, let's pause for a moment, this doesn't make sense
- They have fighters in orbit ! I'm on it !
- I'll cover you with the RPG !
- I'm so going back to Wow...
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
does the the IRC server push the aggregated message to all the clients as the patent covers
Yes. IRC pushes messages to clients that are subscribed to the channel. Nagle's algorithm, which is part of almost all TCP/IP stacks, aggregates multiple messages from the IRC server into a single packet in order to reduce overhead.
Re: (Score:2)
Doom wasn't client server. They were all peers.
See: http://doom.wikia.com/wiki/Doom_networking_component [wikia.com]
Quake is client server.
Re: (Score:2)
Netrek, several years earlier, did.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I already claimed a 1 to infinite recursion of the patent patenting patenting .... patent.
Sorry buddy.
(Oh, I also claimed the infinity + 1 recursive patent)
((I also claimed the grammar nazi patent. "a 1" is correct because you don't use "an won", for won is a homophone to one))
Re: (Score:2)
I believe Roger Ebert gave it two stars.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of online patent databases which 'mirror' the USPTO patent DB. Google even has one, and I doubt even slashdot could slashdot-effect google.
Re:Jagex are based in the UK, can they still be su (Score:3, Interesting)