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3D Games Patent Threatens Industry?

Posted by Zonk on from the i-don't-think-this-is-going-to-fly dept.

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."

4 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Remember when... by czarangelus · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Remember back when patents were used to stimulate researchg and development, rather than to emasculate it?

    Neither do I, I'm only 22.

    --
    When a true genius appears, you can know him by this sign: that all the dunces are in a confederacy against him.
    1. Re:Remember when... by cgenman · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I've often wondered when this would come up.

      Pretty much all of the game companies I've worked for have patented something. A lot of these were looked upon as either "We're going to be terribly rich" in the heat of the moment, then ignored later on, or are just kept around in case someone else starts a patent war. And, of course, nobody knows about it, and everyone does it, because who would think someone would have a patent on a character playing silly sound effects when you click on it repeatedly?

      And that's really the problem: people are getting more and more bigger and bigger legal guns pointed at eachother's heads through this system. Everyone knows that despite their mandate, the patent office doesn't check these things. So more people get more and more of these guns. It's mutually assured destruction on an industry-wide scale, and it's foolish. It's basically asking for the same trouble as the mutual defense treaties of world war 1... once a shot is fired, everyone's guns are going to start going off.

      I can't believe congress is having hearings on Major League Baseball when real problems as gaping as this exist in the system.

      --
      The ______ Agenda
  2. Patents are really out of hand. by Travelsonic · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Am I the only one who sees the need for patent reform? If such a thing was to come and change the patent system (I hope to GOD so in the near future), I think that patent reform should include diasllowing patents on things thant ANYBODY can do with ease, or generic items.

    --
    If you believe in privacy, and believe you have "nothing to hide" at the same time, you're a goddammed idiot
  3. What I remember by MarkusQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have nothing at this point (I'm working outside the US at this moment, I don't even have my notes) but it shouldn't be to hard to dig up again. Pre-google (Alta-vista + brick & mortar library) search took about a day.

    Here's what I recall off the top of my head:

    • Pretty much every projection to/from a sphere is known art to cartographers, and has been for many decades. Look in a few old cartography books.
    • Likewise, the math behind them (called projective geometry) is old hat. We found a projective geometry book from 1900 or so that spelled out the transform
    • Artists in the 1800s or so used to do paintings (called anamorphoses, IIRC) that not only used the same tricks but for exactly the same purpose. It may go back much further, but (again, IIRC) the really compelling photos we found were from work in the mid 1800s.
    Anyone who wants to is welcome to run with this, expand on it, and pass it on to anyone that it might help.

    --MarkusQ

    P.S. One further thing I recall, the laywer asked them something like "could you please specify what your patent covers--it obviously can't be the mathematics, and it can't be the technique san math, so...?"