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Yahoo! Sues Xfire Game Browser
Gamespot has the word that Yahoo! has filed a lawsuit against XFire, just two months after Yahoo!'s acquisition of the All-Seeing Eye, a similar game matching program. However, the lawsuit seems to revolve around the Yahoo! developed GameProwler. The program allows instant messaging users to see if buddies are currently playing games. From the article: "As this complaint is just one week old, no 'next steps' are certain. Lawyers familiar with patent law have told GameSpot a case like this could cost up to $2 million to defend and take up to two years to fully adjudicate."
I know I've seen, at the very least, the old Gamespy program do this (i.e., keep a list of user names and whether they are playing on a server).
Anybody got a link to the text of the patent?
From the article, it looks like there are two problems:
1)Kirmese, one of the Xfire's management, worked for Yahoo and came up with the patent in question while in Yahoo's employment.
2)Whether the implementation of connecting gamers through messenger programs under patent 6,699,125 is really enforceable.
Yahoo is concerned about a former employee using an implementation of connecting gamers together through a messenging service. Somehow, I suspect the patent itself might fall within prior art. The patent was awarded in 2004, and I seem to remember other examples of using messenging services to get games going.
They've patented the standard way of doing online cross-game friends detection, but With an IM client. I see they've found up my patented "Way of patenting things with superficial addition X, with a browser" Since they already know it, I'd like to share it with you all.
Remember that this way of patenting things (with a browser) is patented, and is available for a nominal lawsuit when I catch you.
First take an everyday concept, like buying dogfood or raking your lawn. Explain this in excruiciatingly exacting language, carefully crafted to be as broad and unintelligible as possible. If necessary, run it through an obfuscation program to get the broadest possible interpretation bork. Then, and this is key, to the end of the patent add the words "with an X" where X is something the patent clerk doesn't really understand with a browser.
Here are some examples of things that you can get away with, err, add to the end of everyday activities, to get your own shiny new patent.
With the internet
With a CPU (whatever that would mean)
With an IM client
With XML
Live
With one click
With a shared data management paradigm arrangement
With multiple people at once
With an electronic circuit
With a cellular data network*
With a frick'in laser beam
With an open-source environment
With a closed-source environment
With a plug-in
With metadata
Automatically
With subdomains
With an encryption layer (cover all of your bases and encrypt this patent)
If you are still having trouble thinking up things to patent, see also this helpful list. No idea is too obvious or too widely in practice to slip by the patent office with a browser. Yes, for just 20 million dollars in theoretical damages awarded by a judge who also didn't know what they were doing, you too could sue the pants off of anyone mowing their lawn in a closed-source environment. I guarentee it!**
*Note that while "With a multiuser telephonic networking connection" is acceptable, "over the phone" is not.
**Not an express or implied guarentee.
The ______ Agenda
Welcome to the world of patents and politicians that are owned by the corporations. Until people get some backbone and quit voting because they are afraid be prepared for more of the same.