Slashdot Mirror
Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games? Kinda.
Eddie Edwards writes "This story over at Gamasutra details how Worlds.com have been awarded US patent 6,219,045 for - well, for more-or-less exactly the client-server architecture used in Quake. As the article says, "the company believes the patent may apply to currently in-use multi-user games" (!) and Worlds.com "will also review other 3D sites who may be using [their] technology to ensure [they] are fully compensated". " Of course, Worlds.com will prolly get squashed on the prior art issue - but wow. From what I can see, IANAL, it's not so much Quake-like games, but more like 3D chat-game-type environment.
Not if they applied for the patent before those games came out (there's often a long delay between patent filing and patent granting, so this patent may actually have been applied for a long time ago; I'm not sure).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Yeah, I played Quake1 shareware sometime in late95/early96. I remember cuz I moved summer 96 and it was before that. =]
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
It's dated: April 17, 2001 / Nov. 12, 1996
It was released waaaay before 96 and it included multiplayer. I can't remember if Wolfenstein did, so Doom might not even be the first.
___
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
So, even if they get smacked back with Prior Art, what's stopping the person with the Prior Art from establishing the same dumb-ass patent? (Kind of OT, but I've always been curious about that - what if this hoopla just makes someone say to themselves, "Oh, I can patent this? Why didn't someone tell me?")
Send your friends messages of love at fuck-you.org
Yes. In more detail, when someone tried to patent the waterbed, Stranger in a Strage Land was cited, invalidating the patent.
- Sam
The secret to enjoying Slashdot is to realize that it should not be taken too seriously.
Since patents are basically a temporary right granted to inventors by limiting the rights to use certain ideas for the whole society, why not charging a licence fee or tax for the duration of this privilege - very much like the state is charging telephone companies for the right to use limited frequency ressources.
The space of ideas (esp. in the field of software patents where usually every hacker thinking longer about a problem will come up with a simmilar solution) is clearly a public ressource to all mankind, so I don't see why patent holders shouldn't pay for their temporary monopoly to exploit parts of it, esp. as the common practice of look-away or defense-only patents doesn't serve the original intent of making new technology faster available.
What about the following scheme: everybody who files for a (justified) patent has to fix a buyout price for it (i.e. should a group of people or companies pay the patent holder this price, then the patent immediately becomes void and the technology is from then on free for everybody to use). The holder of the patent is then required to pay an annual percentual tax (something about 1 to 5 %, maybe also increasing with time) of this price for as long as he wishes to uphold the patent (up to it's maximum duration). The buyout price can be annually adopted within a certain range (say +/- 20%) by the holder to react to new technological developements.
A annual patent fee would make it expensive to hold on to patents which don't generate revenue (and therefor don't help promote technology), be it either because they are bogus to begin with (no one will pay amazon a dime for their one-click patent since it is probably not valid in the first place), or simply useless or obsolete.
This also has the additional benefit of keeping the number of patents low (which is always a good thing, as it means more freedom for everyone and less restrictions on innovation, or - in one word - less lawyers) while not cutting too much into the legetimate revenue of the holders.
It also makes the patent market more transparent and reduces the risk of abiguities or unintentional violations as patents holders have to be in bussines somehow (either by exploiting their patent themselves or by offering licences) as they usually won't be able to afford to simply wait and then cache in from unsuspecting "offenders" (as with the GIF-patent issue).
While I personally consider the concept of intellectual property as problematic per se, I realise that some incentive has to be given for making your brainwork publicly available. So the poposed scheme is some sort of compromise, which, while being compatible with the current patent system, might at least control some of the current abuse, by simply making hoarding patents for the sake of hoarding less profitable.
Half of William Gibson's work probably invalidates the patent too.
~Cederic
I'm fairly certain that the Pueblo MUD client was out by '96, as well. Pueblo had its own built-in VRML renderer. The MUD client (most from the MUSH, MUCK, etc. line) were hacked to send special messages to the client, giving it the URL of a VRML file to load, the URL of avatar objects, etc. You had to create scripts in the MUD's programming language to send update messages to the client, to let it know where in the VRML space the objects in the MUD's room were.
It never really got off the ground, alas. It was only for Windows, and never quite caught on with either the players or the admins. I had played with it a bit on a MUSH I was an admin on. MUSH programming was ugly. MUSH programming to talk to a graphical client was brain damaging.
The company that made Pueblo (Chaco) still have their web site up (http://www.chaco.com/pueblo/, although they later became LikeMinds, which later was absorbed into MacroMedia. The copyright dates on their site say 1995, and they had a Windows 3.1 version of the cleint(!) so it's a fair bet Pueblo was around before this patent application.
Back in my mudding days (circa 1992) there was at least one rudimentary graphical mud. The resolution was terrible, the objects blocky, the color limited, but depending on how the patent is read it would probably constitute prior art. 3d is, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder. Does hitting ctrl-r and ctrl-l to turn left and right and displaying a still of the same room count? Certainly 3d, if not as finely tuned as, say, a Doom or Quake interface, but where does one draw the line? 90 degrees between frames, or 0.00001 degree? Communications and chatting between characters was certainly a major part of the game.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
How could anyone be certain what the courts will decide "3D" means? Did they happen to mention three spatail dimensions? Then color could count as a dimension. There are lots of dimensions in the world, and no reason not to include R X G X B as a 3D arena (aka RGB). Actually there is controversy as to whether it is 3D or 4D (CMYK), and Epson wants to add a couple of extra to give shinyness, and ?? (I don't have the right printer, so I haven't paid close attention.
Still, as long as we are just talking about CRT's, there is RGB cross for a five dimensional aperture. Perhaps we'll just ignore things like flicker speed, but one shouldn't forget that we aren't talking about still life. So we need to add in time. That gives us a 6D CRT screen.
Who can tell what the courts will decide that 3D means?
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson describes the 'metaverse'.. It was released in 1992 - and desccribes the _exact_ thing the patent describes.
;)
The metaverse is a highly scalable architecture for three dimensional graphical, multi-user. interactive virtual world system. {blabla] The virtual world shows avatars (yes, the book uses avatars too) representing the other users [..]
In short, the entire patent is a ripoff of Neil Stephensons book Snow Crash.
Its a bogus patent.
--
"Rune Kristian Viken" - http://www.nwo.no - arca
And in the notes at the end of Snowcrash, Stephenson mentions a BBS system from the freaking Comodore 64 which had avatars.
Methinks that prior art is going to abound.
-jon
Remember Amalek.
Well, I looked it up and according the The Lessons paper they started working on Habitat in 1985. So it's early. It used a client/server (OOP/message) model, they talk about avatars and they note, on the topic of the future that:
There are several directions in which this work can be extended. Most obvious is to implement the system on more advanced hardware, enabling a more sophisticated display.
(For those wondering, the original on-line Habitat client was C64 based and looked somewhat like the early Lucasgames graphical adventures, like Maniac Mansion. How I love those games...)
Belief is the currency of delusion.
But if you are awarded a patent on something that has prior art (or known use in the industry) don't companies usually NOT say that there may be prior art? I doubt that this could be used for Quake like games - in fact the whole things seems silly to me. Anyone with real legal know-how on this one?
I'm not sure that this patent can be stretched to apply to 3D games - however, as they are planning to "review sites using their technology," I get the distinct impression they're doing this as a way to generate $$$ with the old "pay-us-you're-using-our-idea" routine.
I've seen assorted 3D interactive environments, both chat and game. Indeed, some 3D games have chat in them. The concept itself is something that has been done in a variety of ways and discussed in even more ways. I can't see it holding up in court.
However, some people prefer to pay fees then face court. So let's keep watching.
If we're lucky, the sheer stupidity of this patent will be a useful tool against patent-mania.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
This company released its first products a long time ago, like 1996-97. Why are they only getting a patent now?
"will also review other 3D sites who may be using [their] technology to ensure [they] are fully compensated"
Aha! This is quite clearly, at least to me, a stab in the dark at getting money. See, their current business model isn't working, and they aren't getting any money. So they figure, "If I can't get money legitimately, I'll sue people!" So they go around claiming that everyone owes them money. This is the last gasp of a dying company, I think.
I'll make a bet: if this ploy fails, they will go on fuckedcompany.com very soon after.
"We will also review other 3D sites who may be using our technology to ensure we are fully compensated"
They've just been awarded the patent, and are now planning to go after a 'plurality' of existing 3D sites that are supposedly already using "their" technology. In other words, he admits there are a number of other sites that have already been using such technologies for a while --- given that these other sites all developed their technology without literally stealing it from his company, isn't he basically admitting that their is prior art? "We just got this patent and now we're going to go after a bunch of people who actually independently developed these same techniques"
There must be huge amount of prior art on this one (and yes, I have read the patent, and the techniques described in this patent are precisely my line of work). The techniques described are not only in existing games like Diablo2 (not sure about Quake3 as Quake3 doesn't attempt to cull visible avatars to a maximum amount as the patent describes - Quake3 will render all of them if all of them are in view), but have been in common use (precisely as described) in military simulations, including support in open standards like DIS/HLA. I believe the lithtech engine also does what the patent describes.
-----
Didn't doom use this same architecture
Not really, this lame patent specifically includes that the system cull visible avatars to a maximum number. This is an incredibly lame thing to try patent, but to my knowledge none of the ID line of games does this. Doom and Quake (versions 1 to 3) will always display *all* avatars that are in a clients view.
Nonetheless, there is a LOT of prior art. Diablo II, for example, sounds to me like it fits the bill fairly well (although not strictly "3D" in the usual computer-graphics sense of the word). Games aside, a lot of existing military simulations use precisely the techniques described, and *are* "3D" (in the computer-graphics sense of the word). They are even based on open standards such as DIS/HLA. DIS has been around for years.
-----
Quake, first commercially published in August of 1996, does not predate the patent application by a year. Without passing upon the question whether or not the patent's claims read upon Quake, Quake may not be relevant in determining its validity.
... its more like a 3D version of IRC.
Read the details of the patent.
The surprise isn't how often we make bad choices; the surprise is how seldom they defeat us.
This means that Worlds.com is going to pick up the tab from that big lawsuit, right?
Erm. Yes. Posts which make nonobvious claims without backing them up deserve to be modded greatly.
--
There's two sides to these stupid patents. There's the USPTO, which is issuing them, and the companies filing them. The reason they file them is that there's very little to lose by filing bogus patents. What kind of penalties would be effective at deterring companies from filing bogus patent applications?
------
I agree, I remember something like this capability being in Moraff's Revenge which came out for 8086 machines running CGA graphics in the late 80's. It didn't use a seperate server, but if I recall correctly, you could get a monster's eye view of your party, though that might only have occurred while you were in the process of being eaten by the monster.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
Yep - they were on the list, as was I. All of this stuff has been discussed in public forums.
I was the original lead programmer on EnterTelevision / CyberTalk / OnLive Technologies that did Traveler, I've done tons of similar projects before and after for various game companies (SSI, Bethesda, Accolade), and I still design highly scalable VR systems today for fun...
Everything in that patent is already in the public domain, in the system as they describe it, predating their application. All claims can be invalidated.
If anyone has _real_ need of prior art, I'd be happy to dig through my reference collection and make everything available. I've spent years collecting docs and papers for just this event.
As a previous poster mentioned, this is the "new economy" business model. Patent office is now ran by patent sharks and incompetent examiners, so patent all you can and launch shakedown.
"This explaines why their stock is currently trading at 9 cents."
awwww come on they're at 9.5 cents!
The idea of patents was to encourage innovation. If someone invents something he can patent it and make some money from the monopolisation of an idea. Thus even the backyard inventor should have a possibility to make some money and not get overrun by the superior marketing of some huge corporation.
But with the patent system as it is today, especially the USPTO, it is quite the oposite. To patent something does cost more than the backyard inventor can afford and most of these patents don't ever make a buck, so only big firms can afford to take some shots in the dark until one of them hits. The patents are used for protecting business modells and to shut others out more than anything else, and the way they are used is as the threat of a lawsuit, noone but some big business can live through. So the backyard inventor, or a startup business is demotivated, often enough simply by the fact, that it's next to impossible to figure out, if something is already patented or in the process of becoming patented without a team of specialized lawyers. And in the end a patent is only worth as much, as the lawyers you're paying to defend it.
So patents are stifling innovations because:
- They protect business models, hence the protected business has no need of new inventions.
- They favour big businesses who can afford the lawyers instead of startups which have much more motivation for inventing something.
- They entangle the introductions of new products with a complicated process of tracking down patents which might be relevant
- Especially the granting of overbroad patents to basic methods stifles progress on anything relying on those methods
- Instead of creating more legal security for the inventor they create more insecurity, since the inventor might suddenly find himself in a lawsuit
- Patents are used to suppress superior technologies if they compete with something creating more revenue
- The time patents are valid is too long in relation to the fast paced development
All of this seems so very obvious that this posting should probably be moderated redundant.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Yes, it's exactly like those games. However, I'm not so sure it's an invalid patent. I remember using worlds.com when it first showed up, and I remember that at that point in time, there was nothing like it. So it's quite possible that they came up with the idea first, and so why shouldn't they patent it? Just because something's widely used doesn't mean it can't be patented. At the time they filed (1996), this wasn't widely used at all.
All that this type of enviroment being widely used means is that worlds.com had a great idea and sparked a lot of people to develop similar systems.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
Keep a lid on it this long? Worlds.com has been around since about 1994 or so when they came out with their first 3d chat room stuff (which is basically what this patent is for). I remember using it back then, and it was a very cool idea. Not enough to hold my interest for very long, but a cool idea all the same. Fact of the matter is, they filed in 1996, which is actually after they debuted. The patent is just only getting awarded now. They were around long before EQ was. So while it is a patent on something that is *now* fairly commonplace, it wasn't at the time. It may actually stand, even agaist vigorous claims of prior art.
Yes, there are a lot of stupid patents out there, and more are granted every day. But this one may actually be legit. Worlds.com implemented a great idea, and then when they saw it was kinda neat, applied for a patent on it. Now, whether or not sci-fi books that described a similar system qualify as prior art is another question. I'm not really sure that they would.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
[insert IANA caveat here]
Actually, this is a curious point. They tend to say "three dimensional, graphical space" or some such, which means the virtual area could be "3D", independant of the projection (which is generally on a 2D monitor).
Also, even if someone interprets this to mean real, genuine, 3D interaction, bad news because if those "relatively miniscule" displays ever do catch on, they'll run up against this patent roadblock when they shouldn't. They shouldn't because this has already been done in 2D, and the extension to real 3D, when it becomes available, should fit the "obvious" clause of patent law.
I'm sure people were messing with 3D Avatars for chat rooms some time ago, although I haven't found any in 10 minutes of sifting through archives that meets the Nov. 1996 requirement. It's out there, tho; I'll find it. Or someone else will.
Hmmm.
A System to Distribute and Protect Intellectual Property? Or maybe, maybe, A System to Validate Uniqueness and Protect Duplication? Or perhaps we should put the clerks in place, like, A Multi-User Intellectual Property Protection System. Heck, that sounds like SDMI.....
-----
Klactovedestene!
The Worlds, Inc. people almost certainly knew about this, as Tom Meyer, one of the authors, was on the VRML Advisory Group, and I'm pretty certain someone from Worlds, Inc. was on the VAG, too. This was also at the first VRML conference, in 1995. And WAXweb was one of the very first (if not the first) sites to serve VRML over the World-Wide Web.
And Stephenson's Snowcrash was all over the VRML community at that time. Everyone knew that what they wanted to do was implement the Black Sun - the bar where Hiro demonstrates his abilities as a "hacker." In fact, one of the VRML start-ups was called Black Sun.
You can go back even farther to check out Lucas's Habitat system, back in the eighties. Actually, now that I think of it, I remember hearing at the time that Worlds was planning on patenting some of this stuff - my boss at the time was Andy van Dam, one of the leading lights of computer graphics, who scoffed at the prospect of Worlds patenting anything so obvious. Andy and Tom were both all over that stuff, as they were instrumental in establishing the VRML Consortium.
-----
Klactovedestene!
Someone should patent patents and then not give any more out.
--
python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
As the author of the first 3D, first-person shooter multi-user game I can tell you it is pretty dang silly to expect to see basic, far-reaching patents in this area. I mean, it was 1974 when I first devised that system, and it was pretty "obvious" at that time -- including chat system, limitation of visibility and alteration of rendering methods by distance and view, etc. All it really took was the vision to actually write a 3D game (a vision which had been around for a long time when I first put finger to keyboard), some programming skill and access to the PLATO system. In the quarter of a century since then, there has been so much work done in multiuser distributed 3D gaming (including Kevet Duncombe's LAN-based microprocessor game hosting system which he built and demonstrated in the early 1980s, client-side rendering, etc.), that it is very hard to believe any broadly blocking patents are left in this arena that aren't of the "one click shopping" variety.
Seastead this.
The patent was applied for in 1996.
Where I work we are supposed to keep engineering notebooks. When we come up with some idea that might be unique and patentable, we are supposed to have someone else in the company who understands the concept witness and date the notebook. My understanding is that this is to show when we came up with the idea in case we patent it and it gets challenged. If this is really how it works, then the actuall date the patent is filed or when Quake was released is less important then when they can prove they came up with the idea.
When did you use it, was it before Nov 1996? This patent took 4 1/2 years to get approved, so it may have been unique when they were developing it and writing up the patent.
I used a semi-3d irc type program many many years ago. I think it was on MSN. It was like a Star Trek chat room or something, anyway, you could select a body and walk around and talk to people. It was sorta neat.
The idea sure isn't very novel as this type of thing has been written about in zillions of books etc., and has already been done.
But whatever, the patent office seems to know what's best.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
What's silly is that they actually are going to waste money trying to pursue this. Didn't doom use this same architecture (arguably not in 3d, but that's just an obvious extension). Or the plethora of doom clones? I know I was playing these before 1996. If I thought harder, I could probably even come up with WAY older 2d games which used the same basic architecture.
Also note on the linked patents on that page -- someone was nice enough to patent video games in the year 2000. w00t.
-Puk
This patent would affect games like EverQuest. It seems that what really separates it from Quake is that their patent involves a scalable architecture.
I am not sure when they actually designed this technology and began patenting it. Because it is specific to a 3D environment, the only example of prior art that I can think of would be EverQuest. AFAIK, all other similar items (EG muds.) were based in only two dimensions. Given the incredibly long development time of EverQuest, it seems rather likely that EQ is the only example of prior art that one will ever need. This of course, assumes that Worlds.com did not begin their development efforts before EverQuest was started, which means that they would have been working on this stuff at least five or six years ago. I doubt that they would have been able to do so and keep a lid on it this log while maintaining any useful influx of capital.
In short, worlds.com is probably full of shit and needs to keep their lawyers in check.
Like that stupid BT hyperlink patent. Whatever happend with that? Or that guy's patent on date windowing for Y2K. He was going to start suing people for lots of money after Y2K wasn't he? We really need to start getting follow ups for these stories.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
AOL: "We're reasonable people: the paperwork for your License to use Air Of Life[AOL](tm) technology will come through next week. We'll allow you to keep breathing, but there will be compensatory and actual damages of three times the normal license fee for the duration of the period during which you continue to use our patents without a proper license. The total will come to $3,246.95. Thank You for your business." LOL
Interacting isn't just talking. Shoving a rocket up your nose (Q3Arena) or a mortar round down your pants (Tribes2) is interacting. It's just not all that polite. :)
I read the claims. They are broad. And you have to remember that in order to infring a patent infringing a single claim or even a substantial portion of a single claim is enough. Basically it applies to all 3d enviroments matching claim 5. For some more info on patent law, specifically infringing on one, look here.
Doesn't matter. In a court of law only the exact wording of the claims and claims only(no descriptions, abstracts, pictures, etc..) determines whether you're infringing or not. And sometimes it is enough to infringe a substantial portion of a single claim to be in violation.
This may have been a perfectly valid thing to patent back in 1996. (At least more so then now.) But to just begin to enforce it now would simply be silly.
If, in the time it takes to get your patent, other people come up with the same idea from scratch, You've defeated the purpose of Patents. They haven't stolen anything from you but you can still sue them. You've simply created a bizarre legal weapon.
You have to be able to begin selling and licensing your new product ASAP after inventing it. Otherwise you're allowing other people to duplicate your effort. Duplication of effort is never a good thing and it is even worse if you're going to come along later and say that their duplicated effort is now worthless. If That happens now the Patent Holder is essentially stealing from everyone else!
The patent office needs to find a way to turn around patents a lot faster. I suppose they this means they need a larger, better-trained staff. But it would be worth a few tax bucks.
-Andy
Johnathan Clark has hit the nail on the head (post #292). While Worlds' PR and legal departments may claim otherwise, the core of the patent is a way for the system to keep the frame rate up: draw only the N people closest to you. And the system did exactly what he expects. People blinked in and out of the scene as they entered or left the magical group of N. Remember, this was for a 3-D *chat* company. You were expected to find 1-2 interesting people, then park yourself in front of them while you typed back and forth. If you are only a couple of "feet" from them, there's little risk that they'll pop out of your screen graph. (And remember that this was back in 1995/1996; we wanted to support 200 people in a room with only a Pentium on the client box. It was a reasonable solution.)
None of this would apply to an FPS like Quake because there are an order of magnitude fewer players in a given space, and you have to see *all* of them for the game to be playable.
It may apply to games like Everquest, however, if they do some sort of N-closest culling scheme. (Sorry, never played them, so I can't say.) If they do distance based culling, then, well, how fine do you want your hairs split? I do remember seeing a very early (free? shareware?) 3-D networked FRPG back in 1996 that might help prove prior art, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
Claim 5 on the patent is a mish-mash of items. Some of them would never stand up to any challenge, being a mish-mash of MUD and FPS technology. (``[R]endering a 3-D view from a viewpoint of the location of the particular user''? Puh-leeze.) HOWEVER, note that the patent describes a system that goes up to *worlds* running on different servers an connecting to their own particular set of clients (see section (g)). This sounds a lot like Everquest or Diablo, and I don't know of any MUDs that scaled to that level.
See post #120 for a bit more info.
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Grin, well despite being attacked for it being '94 and earlier, I'm glad to know that I hadn't lost my mind. The program was "cool" even if not totally useful. I liked the idea... but I'd spend 5 minutes as a slow moving Avatar, log off the Internet, and dial into a local BBS... :)
:)
Neat idea, but the masses groked "channels" easier than people thought, at least once AOL started calling them chat rooms...
Note to self: pick up a copy of AOL for a free month one of these days... figure out why the masses seam to like it...
Note to others: if you are coding Open Source Stuff for end users, get copies of end user systems (Apple w/ MacOS 9, Apple w/ MacOS X, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, etc.) and see what people like. If you want to design for hackers, don't claim to be making things for the masses.
Either they bought the domain name, or this is the company that has been at this since '96/'97 (hard to tell, Slashdotted). They had cool Avatar chatting systems, etc.
Their stuff was really neat and novel, and probably deserving of protection. They brought a cool concept out to the marketplace years before others, and in doing so helped legitamize it.
You used to be able to go to Tucows and find a couple of chatting paradigms, and this one was really cutting edge back then.
This company isn't looking to patent chatting...it's staking out it's claim to all future MMORPG's. It's sad that one company can patent something that's so widely used.
I'm going to patent breathing. Pay up.
--
Wooden armaments to battle your imaginary foes!
The game Furcadia also predates the 1996 date of the patent.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
For some bizarre reason, apparently science fiction isn't treated as prior art.
-Ian.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"and we all know how because RAH described the waterbed in a book that they could not get a patent for it right? Snow Crash was published in 1992.
Neal Stephenson to the rescue.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
Perhaps they are doing us all a great service. Since their patent applies to 3-D graphics and true 3-D graphics don't really exist (as an earlier poster pointed out), by the time real 3-D displays (holographic, I assume) exist this patent will have expired thus opening the realm of 3-D gaming to all without the threat of patent infingement!!! We should send them a thank you letter.
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Who wants to bet that they get visited by a bunch of guys with nail guns?
I mean, this is just a land grab to see what they can get away with. and they must be hoping that everyone is a sheeple.
I want to go break some fingers at the patent office. Someone needs to patent the idea of a word processor and a spread sheet.
This is starting to fall into the category of needing heavy weaponry as an attitude adjustment tool.
[sigh]
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
[It has been reported that ZeroClick partner Martha's Dildo Vineyard has been responsible for several domestic disturbances due to unexpected adult-oriented deliveries. We at ZeroClick sincerely apologize for that.]
I know that /. is very anti-patent these days. But I swear we only patented ZeroClick technology to keep someone else from patenting it. Can you imagine what someone else might do with this incredible technology?
Sure, we've entered into licensing agreement with several e-mail marketing firms. [Just be careful- clicking "delete message" may actually obligate you to buy something].
To find out more about ZeroClick and our very affordable license plan, click HERE.
Don't panic, folks. Read the actual patent first. It is pretty narrow in scope.
It would take quite a stretch to make this affect Quake/Duke Nukem/et al.
Nothing to worry about. Back to fragging.
The real DunkPonch is user 215121. Everyone else is Bruce Perens.
....wherein the step of limiting is a step of determining which avatars are closest in the graphical space to the local avatar.
The patent uses the word "avatar" over 30 times to describe a person's representation in a 3-D environment. Funny, Stephenson called them that in SnowCrash. Wait, he basically described the thing being patented. Oops.
I have to say that many people on /. are quick to jump on the anti-crack cocaine bagwagon. What you have to realize is that it's necessary in the business world. Often profits from crack cocaine are used just to solidify positions when attempting financing, etc.
There is no excuse for committing perjury and civil fraud which is what a frivolous patent application is.
As a VC I would not be impressed by a business plan that amounted to no more than exploiting a frivolous patent. Filling a defensive patent to prevent someone else from filling is a different matter entirely. However the problem with those applications is that they are used to justify the USPTO scheme since they measure the 'success' of the system by the number of patents filled.
It is no surprise that most people on slashdot have a dim view of patents in general. The utter incompetence of the USPTO means that even genuine patents are hard to enforce. The typical response to a patent claim is for the corporation concerned to flip the bird at the owner. Most patents issued in the Internet space are completely bogus and border on outright fraud. So why take much notice of the constant stream of demands for payment?
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
It must be at least 25 years old but I am pretty sure it represents prior art for the patent.
The patent is probably invalid in any case on account of vagueness. 3D multiplayer games have been arround for many years. The ability to render complex scenes in 3D from unconstrained viewpoints is new but that has nothing to do with the scope of the invention claimed.
The technique of dropping items from a display to reduce processing costs has been used in 3D for at least 30 years.
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
Maybe I should make a comment about patenting comments relating to patenting stupid comments about patenting patents.
No, I know, I'll make a comment about copyrighting comments about patenting stupid comments about patenting patents! Then I'll trademark making comments having to do with copyrighting comments relating to patenting stupid comments about patenting patents!
Awww, fsck it.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}