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Computer Solitaire Patented?
Sadburger writes "Saw this over on GameDev:
'Thomas Warfield of Pretty Good Solitaire is reporting in his most recent blog that: 'My company has received the following letter from a law firm claiming to have a client that has patented computer solitaire. And by extension, all computer card games. I am not kidding.' Patent law strikes again...'
Anyone know a good patent lawyer?" Someone alert the educational sector, since at least half my programming classes involved solitaire, poker, or blackjack.
Is it just me, or isn't Goldberg the guy who was notorious for making submarine pattents for anything and everything computer related before they were even made?
I think he even tried pattenting a memory chip originally, and somehow delayed it and fudged it over time into a microprocessor.
The USPTO needs a overhaul and right soon.
You know, the guy who wrote solitaire for Windows back in the early 90s.
Beauty is in the eye of the beerholder.
Unless the patent was filed before 1979, there is plenty of prior art. I remember playing poker and blackjack on my TRS-80 when I was 4 years old.
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I suggest reading the comments in the blog. Several other developer friends of mine have posted (Scott, Sean! What's up?) great points. Scott Miller posted a great point about his company being sued because a wrestler thought his name was stolen for a game: Max Payne. The stupidity and greed extends far and wide.
The Patent office just ran out of excuses for allowing frivilous patents through the process. It is understandable that a patent examiner might not be equipped enough to understand a one-click shopping patent, or a patent about 3rd party payment transactions over a phone network, but not understanding solitare? Even in its currently obfuscated form the patent is flagrantly obvious. Even in 1995 people were talking about how much time is wasted playing computer solitare. It would be like someone patenting the concept of a winged reusable space vehicle after the Columbia explosion, or patenting a vaccuum tube based moving picture box.
The only way this is going to change is if the patent office becomes liable for the total defense costs + 20% of anybody who engaged in a patent fight and had the patent ruled invalid. Expecting the American small businessman to do the patent office's job for them is rediculous. They are charged with being an authority on a particular and significant portion of US law, but have degraded into a rubber-stamp. Anyone who even read this patent would have declared it invalid. The patent office must feel the financial pinch of their mistakes, or they will continue to make them as part of their modus operandi.
It is no longer enough to go hunting against one painfully obvious patent at a time. We must correct the system that is so incompetent as to allow anything at all to be approved with the full protection of the law. That system, the patent office, and the people who work there, just ran out of excuses.
The ______ Agenda
These are the same thugs that are harassing Star Chamber. I've been thinking about how to combat this problem. Perhaps it's time for a Viral Patent License. Here's how it would work:
A Viral Patent Board would be set up as a charitable foundation, with the stated goal of eliminating the use of software patents.
Companies are either VPL friendly, neutral, or agressive.
All companies start as neutral.
A company remains neutral if they have never fired the first shot, but have not yet given the VPB permission to use their portfolio.
A company is agressive if they have threatened a friendly or neutral company for software patent infringement. IOW, if you ever fire the first shot in a patent battle, you are forever considered agressive.
A company is friendly if they have:
1. Promised in writing to never fire the first shot.
2. Allow their entire software patent portfolio, now and in the future, to be used by the Viral Patent Board to threaten agressive companies. This license is non-exclusive.
3. Require in the licensing terms of all their intellectual property that agressive companies be excluded from licensing. IOW, if you have a patent that Microsoft has licensed to incorporate into MS-Word, then part of your deal with Microsoft must be that MS-Word not be licensable by agressive companies.
4. Agree that beginning in 2009, it's open season on neutral companies as well, and the Viral Patent Board may sue them as they see fit.
The net effect would be that all software would eventually become infected with Viral Patent Board controlled IP, and such software would not be licensable by agressive companies. This means that even if you write no software - you're nothing but a software patent litigator - you must conduct your business without the aid of software of any kind. This might be further extended to the attorneys that work for such companies, so that they could not use software, even at home.
I'm posting as AC because I am in the MMO games business, and own a patent critical to that business that many companies are infringing on. I am willing be the first to hand over my patent to stop this nonsense.
I was wondering if it is possible in our legal system to sue the USPTO for causing these financial damages through their incompetent approval of bogus patents?
These trivial patents are keeping bright, industrious people working as virtual slaves for the established software publishers who steal the fruit of their mental labor through legal chicanery. The copyright and patent laws intended purpose of furthering Progress is not being accomplished. Instead they have been subverted to the point where the Progress is greatly slowed and only the wealthy can fight one of these (ought to be) unenforceable patents long enough to overturn it.
Those patents all relate to network gaming for card games. Now I was under the impression that Solitaire was a single-player game (hence the name)
How would that relate to network play?
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