3D Games Patent Threatens Industry?
Castar writes "Recently Advanced Video Graphics (AVG) sued several game publishers for infringing on their patent on "Method and Apparatus for Spherical Panning". Since this affects almost every 3D video game, the International Game Developers Association sent out a call for prior art in their monthly newsletter. An industry lawyer has also done an overview of the issue here. I would think lots of CAD software produced before 1983 would invalidate the patent."
The movie Tron released in 1982 contains a shit load of 3D rendered stuff. They used existing products to render the 3D things, these products where commonly used to design technical things.
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One of the companies involved was MAGI Synthavision: http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/tree/magi.ht
Does that qualify as prior art?