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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Klactovedestene!
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.
Well... in this case Worlds has been around for quite a while, and no one else that I'm aware of had implemented anything like shared 3d VR over the internet back when they started it.
Worlds chat was released in 1994, so it does follow Snowcrash by about two years. Can you claim fiction as prior art?
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
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!
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.
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.
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.