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Microsoft's Online Spectator Patent
Next Generation reports on Microsoft's 5000th patent: an online spectator mode for competitive games. From the article: "The system will allow online viewers who are not involved in actual gameplay to view game highlights and instant replays, as well as let them control camera perspectives. A statement from Microsoft also describes 'A portal such as a Web site to access spectator-related services such as schedules and information on multiple games and events as well as the number of spectators and participants in each. The portal allows the spectator to find the most popular games to watch, preview the action, and then connect to the desired game or event.'"
I see no one at Microsoft has every played CounterStrike. This idea just sounds like an XBox port of HLTV. If this patent is only for the XBox version of this system, power to them, they should have control over this. However, if this is an attempt to get the PC Patent for this same idea, they may have another thing coming.
Fractured Element
Hm, I could have sworn that HLTV, done by Valve does just this, and that it has been out for the past 5 years.. And not only that, then i also happen to run the biggest portal for HLTV doing exactly what Microsoft wants their portal to do.. I wonder if my 4 year old portal is now patented, and i should be paying royalties to Microsoft.. Good thing I live in Europe I guess :-)
Yeah, because nobody has ever done that before *cough* Unreal Tournament *cough*.
from TFA "Microsoft's goal is to file 3,000 patents per year."
Amazing. Do they have some sort of Patent Counter in the shape of a dollar sign sitting in a Redmond office building, slowly filling with the blood of lesser companies who are being forced to compensate Microsoft when they use what was once an innovative feature, now solely under Bills control?
At the end of the year, when they are around 2900 patents, what will they resort to in order to fulfill their goal? How does this sound, "Microsoft patents interactive software." I mean, that hasn't been done yet, right?
Colonel Cranium this is Rectal Reconnaissance, we are on a collision course sir, Abort Abort!
I thought patent law wasn't supposed to protect the totally obvious? I mean, seriously, you can just combine existing video game/TV listing features and patent it? Why not add "... on a flatscreen TV" and call it patent #5001?
Ricockulous.
Golly... If my calculations are correct, Microsoft will have patented every idea possible by the year 2030.
On the bright side, all possible ideas will be public domain by 2047.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
My father told me never write down anything you don't want anyone else to take and use as their own.
I hold to that belief today. Everything useful to me as a trade secret stays in my head.
Patents were intended to protect the desire to invent. The slippery slope of using government to protect anything rears its ugly head here, and it is obvious that patent laws can not work -- they'll always be corrupted, slowly buy surely, over the years. Rather than try to use "men with guns" to protect inventors, how about we level the playing field and require people to actually create items and find a way to market them before they're knocked off?
Patents are counter-freedom in every way. If you have an idea, make something. Sell that something. If someone finds a better way to make that something, then take their changes and make THOSE better. That's competition.
When did Blizzard start allowing spectators to their games? It wasn't always in Starcraft, but I THINK that was added later, and I KNOW it's in WC3.
Yahoo Games might have prior on this one (in addition to many, many others..), unless I missed something?
I wonder what the guys at id have to say about this...
http://outcampaign.org/
Patent Protection of an invention is a two-part process. Step One: File for and receive a patent. Step Two: Defend the patent in court. Both pieces are essential.
This won't stand up in court. It used to be that the most challenging part of invention protection was receiving a patent. Once you had a patent, most federal courts would uphold the defensibility of the invention.
Today, the patent office has pushed the responsiblity of invention defense to the federal court system. The statistics bear our that many, many more patents are being awarded, with much higher percentages of success. On the other hand, Federal Courts are siding with patent holders much less than they used to. The system is not necessarily broken, it only means that a patent is worth less and easier to obtain than it used to be.
And if you die? Your "trade secrets" go with you. Why not patent your ideas and leave a nice legacy for your children to profit from? Selfish jerk!
(Besides, ever heard the saying "great minds think alike"? best to patent or produce your ideas ASAP than to sit on them and then whine "hey I thought of that!")
You are a idiot; keeping an idea in your head does _not_ prevent it from being patented.
I must disagree; the patent system IS broken if it results in the granting of large numbers of invalid patents. The USPTO admits that this is the case, and even admits that their examiners are subject to perverse incentives to let stuff through (though they don't explicitly admit the perversity of this.)
Defending against a bogus patent in court is WAY beyond the means of most mortals; justice overpriced is justice denied. Preventing worthless patents in the first place is the way the system is intended to work, and getting it back there is, alas, the only real solution to the present idiot situation.
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Hell, I've done that. And I think that makes this patent fail by the criteria of "obviousness."
from TFA "Microsoft's goal is to file 3,000 patents per year."
I'd rather have them fix 3,000 bugs per year.
The oldest example I can think of (about 10 years old, give or take a year or two) off the top of my head of this is the Myth games (at least Myth 2, and I think the first one had it as well), which actually did the spectator mode (and pretty much everything else) surprisingly well. You could control the cameras, save the replays, everything this patent sounds like it covers.
Since Myth was a creation of Bungie, who got bought out by MS some time ago, I think, as loathe as I am to admit it, that MS might actually have a legitimate claim to this patent. Well, as legitimate as any software patent can be, anyway.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
Add to that the ridiculous patents being awarded today, and we are completely fucked by this shit.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
anyone played starcraft? halflife? QUAKE?
... i mean you could find prior art going back at least a decade in 1 quick google search
all these games allowed this
is invention just not important to the process anymore?
this patent is not original, not non-obvious, not new,
absolute retardation ftw!
I think the WPS 'toilet cam' (hoax that it was) probably counts as prior art from the early '90s
There is SO MUCH prior art that this can't be considered a serious patent.
Wouldn't it be even cooler if people could spectate on games like Counter-strike and the Quake series. How about allowing different spectating camera angles e.g.: follow player and free flying. They could even place a small top-down map in the corner to show the players position relative to enemies and teammates!
Hope no-one has thought of this already else prior art might invalidate any patents.
That would be the first patent I ever read about that I myself held prior art to. Not that it makes much difference.
The game 'Netrek' circa late 80's had spectator slots where observer could follow the game. They could view scores, stats, messages, etc. They could also change camera angles by following a player or staying locked into a specific location.
Of course, prior art no longer matters.
Maybe your tv just wasn't big enough :)
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
got tribes tv?
i can remember many an evening of watching an awesome game of 32 player tribes2
---- Put Sig here:
If we don't pass it on to the USPTO, nothing will change.
I claim prior art in describing this in a story I wrote in 1980 while at Simon Fraser University, in The GOT club magazine.
You'll find copies in the Library of Congress and the Canadian version thereof.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
"... In another dimension ..."
With voyeuristic intention
Well secluded, I see all
It's astounding .... MS got prior art'd by the Time Warp ... Again!
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
Maybe they've got a new way of doing it, but I know that online Go servers (and presumably chess servers as well) allow people to observe on-going games.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Say you have a 12 player Warcraft game going. Add a 13th that streams to 11 observers and another observer node indefinately. You could have a game as ping intensive as Street Fighter 2 and have infinate observers.
God spoke to me.
A statement from Microsoft also describes 'A portal such as a Web site to access spectator-related services such as schedules and information on multiple games and events as well as the number of spectators and participants in each. The portal allows the spectator to find the most popular games to watch, preview the action, and then connect to the desired game or event.'"
I can already do any and all of these things via any of the numerous online poker sites I visit.
I'm certainly no MS fan, but this sounds like another one of their defensive patents. MS has thousands of patents like this that they don't enforce, and don't really plan to. All they are probably doing is making sure someone else doesn't patent the idea and shut them out. Many big companies do this, including IBM.
Open Source for Open Minds
jesus, if there isnt prior art for this, i dont know what it is. proof the uspto needs an overhaul.
-schwal "Hanging is too good for punners, they should be drawn and quoted"
As an engineering major I can tell that this is a really bad idea for anything but computer programs or and anything that runs them (ie microcontrollers). First of all making ideas more complicated involves a decrease in reliability due to an increase in parts. No one in their right minds is going to pay for that. Anything mechanical can be taken apart and reverse engineered. Anything electronic can have the same done to it if someone is really that determined to. No marks on an IC?? No problem take it apart and use a microscope to find out whichone it is. Obviously Philo Farnsworth is related to him:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professor_Hubert_Far
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
If I'm not mistaken, Microsoft's patent request should get rejected, as NCSoft already has done this in Guild Wars.
This is not a new idea for microsoft, to take the idea of another and try to make it their own. The idea behind windows itself was not Gates' own. Microsoft hasn't had an original idea in years, and probably will never have another one. Microsoft (like our own US government) has become overgrown and bloated. The XBox 360 is nothing more than an original xbox with a mod chip and updated hardware, most of its features (besides the obvious ones) have been the idea of the makers of XBMC (Xbox Media Center). Most of it's "new" online features have been the idea of the makers of the Avalaunch Dashboard (with the ability to update the core, skins, and other applications from the web). This is typically on par with everything esle M$ has ever done, no suprises.
Basically, if anyone (the inventor included) publishes the "invention" before the patent is applied for, it becomes "prior art" and is forever excluded from patent protection.
Of course, this is the USPTO we're talking about here; they'll apparently issue a patent on ANYTHING if one is persistent enough...
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
I challenge anyone reading this article to locate ONE POST where the poster realizes that the summary != patent.
Did anyone catch the bottom of the article? 3,000 patents! What's next? Sliced bread?
Even the doom series was like this, you could connect another system via network to view the game, if i recall it was used to set up screens to see behind in front etc of you.
..just because you can, doens't mean you should...
I think this whole discussion of who wrote the code first is moot. The IEEE had an article a few months back in their magazine Spectrum that discussed the validity of patenting software in the first place.
Since all software can be broken down at its lowest level to be just a series of mathematical equations, and you can not patent mathematical equations, you should not be able to patent software. You SHOULD be able to copyright it, but not patent it.
~Mozleron
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups