Slashdot Mirror
Worlds.com Sues NCSoft Over MMO-Patent
Lulfas writes "Worlds.com today sued NCSoft over its patent on a scalable virtual world, filed in 2000 and granted this February. This is a very broad base patent, and there is no reason to expect they will only sue NCSoft, when they should be able to use the same patent against other companies. 'Specifically, the suit claims that NCsoft has infringed on patent 7,181,690, "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" through its games, including City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tabula Rasa.'"
Filed in 2000? Um...shouldn't be too hard to show prior art to overturn it if the patent indeed is applicable to operating MMOs. UO and EQ for sure...probably even text-based MUDs.
Bilski will invalidate this extremely quickly. I guess the company suing really thought NCsoft won't figure that out, or maybe they wanted it to be invalidated that fast?
Doesn't this apply to pretty much every MMO out there? Such a waste of text. Patent should be destroyed, and whoever is worlds.com's head of legal should be punched in the face with a wrecking ball.
Sorry, Xerox beat you to it. They invented everything first.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Lol...how many MMORPG's were out before 2000.
Somewhere a NCsoft lawyer is praticing his layups while saying *swish*
Heh, can't figure this one out on your own?
You don't help them violate your privacy.
You can lead a man with reason but you can't make him think.
It was granted in February of '07
Anyway, this takes some gigantic balls. Granted I only read the abstract, but Ultima and Everquest were active before this shit patent was even filed.
<melodramatic rant!>
Only when we can throw patent examiners in prison for such gross negligence will we have true patent reform!
</melodramatic rant!>
No sig for you!!
On Google Patent Search: 7,181,690.
IANAL. I think I can summarize the patent like this: a system which displays the player's avatar and a limited number of other players' avatar based on virtual presence, plus the server software which tells the client what to display.
I would think that depending on the interpretation of "display", this patent could be invalidated by any text-based MUD. I could easily display the location of other players avatars, and I'm sure there's a MUD out there which could render the character's image in ASCII text.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
If only they had tried to go after Blizzard... Worlds.com would have had their patent invalidated in a very epic way, if you will. :P
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!
Hmm... Seems like DIVE "http://sics.se/dive" did all this as early as the early to mid 90s.
Yeah, prior art?
UO began development before the first patent was filed, was publicly demonstrated technology, and pretty much already did everything mentioned between the two patents.
Obvious point being that UO is a 2D game - or is it? It has three directions of movement, but is merely rendered in military projection by the client. As far as the server goes, every avatar is represented by an X, Y, Z coordinate set.
Draw shortcuts/prioritization by proximity, amount of other avatars/mobiles on screen? Yep.
Scalable server architecture? Yep.
Chat system? Yep.
Stable? So much so that UO is now the longest continually running MMO.
This isn't to mention Meridian 59, or the *other* MMO forerunners that already qualified for the title of 3D virtual world and were in public release before the first patent was filed.
Could someone illuminate what parts of the patent are *not* prior art from the earliest MMOs?
I am so tired of reading about these Patent Troll turds. Let's just pile these guys in with the likes of SCO and Rambus.
People with this mentality come from the non-branching family trees of the ones who also try to enFORCE DRM on the world.
Isn't there a joke in here about a ship containing 1000 (Patent) Lawyers on the bottom of the ocean?...
('Bout time for a ship containing 1000 Patent Examiners to sink also...) Now get off my lawn!
Because many patent attorneys are not entirely sure WTF Bilski has actually done to software patents. And "invalidate this extremely quickly" rarely happens in patent law after a patent has been granted. There are many levels of appeals, etc.
The Bilski decision invalidated a business method patent that was so abstract it could be done in a person's head. The dicta [nonbinding precedent -- stuff unnecessary for the specific holding] of Bilski said some soothing things that made certain computer algorithms appear vulnerable.
But really, do not overestimate Bilski. And don't forget the Supreme Court hasn't yet weighed in on whether it will deny cert to Bilski ... [at least I am not aware of any denial...]
Sounds a lot like my patent, "System and Method for Allowing People to Talk." Perhaps we should get all our lawyers together for a barbeque or something.
M
This is the dumbest most unprofessional patent I have ever seen.
Theres even a kids drawing in the patent.
What about all the other little boys and girls that never got sued this Christmas?
EVE Online
Second Life
Diablo
Hellgate: London
Furthermore, I feel somewhat constrained to point out that they're suing over the "scalable virtual world" patent. World of Warcraft is anything but scalable! There are so many shards - more than 1,500 in North America alone by last count - that it's not as much scalable as it is "add another server Bob, they're lagging again and we need to put the newcomers on another shard!"
Of course, two sufficiently incompetent lawyers could conceivably argue their way into inventing the Internet from this starting topic, but you get my point.
Consider yourself spoken to.
"System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space"
I'd say this predates the computer... tabletop wargames have been played at least since the 1700s in order to model military strategy. and i'm sure there's probably older examples that would fit that tagline.
The Supreme Court, however, has enunciated a definitive test to determine
whether a process claim is tailored narrowly enough to encompass only a particular
application of a fundamental principle rather than to pre-empt the principle itself. A
claimed process is surely patent-eligible under  101 if: (1) it is tied to a particular
machine or apparatus, or (2) it transforms a particular article into a different state or
thing.
http://ipwatchdog.com/cases/bilski.pdf
Lets all work to invalidate frivolous software patents.
... and you'll need to wade your way through 35 USC s102 and related case law to know whether alleged prior art defeated the novelty of this patent.
It's a crappy patent -- I hate it, it's lame, and I think it is pretty damn obvious and does not advance the art -- but as to whether there is prior art, that's another story.
[*Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer, but I am a law student.]
NCSoft has been in a lot of trouble lately, with the recent loss of their founder, and closing T-Rasa. The company seems to be in some sort of free fall. These vultures are simply targeting the weakest in the pack, hoping to gain a few quick bucks before going after the big guys.
over my patent of playing the race card to win an election.
And the first text-based multiplayer virtual world was created in 1978/1979 by Messrs Bartle and Trubshaw. I thought everyone knew that bit of lore by now.
If you look at the link to the actual patent, and begin reading the claims, this does not apply to the (original version of) Ultima Online, or to text muds, because the patent specifically describes a 3-dimensional graphical world as being part of the claims. UO is (or at least was, last time I played it around 2001 or 2002) 2-dimensional. Right about the time I was leaving, they introduced an expansion called Third-Dawn, which still didn't make the world truly 3D, but it did make player avatars and monsters 3D, IIRC.
EQ, as I recall, was true 3D (I only played a trial account for like 10 days once, so my memories are rather vague), so it might be a good candidate for prior art.
It should be noted that the patent does not appear to cover (I don't know for sure; I'm not a lawyer), the idea of a 3D MMO, per se, but rather a few necessary client rendering techniques (which, in reality, almost any 3D MMO would be likely to employ) for determining what other users' avatars should be displayed by the client. It appears the idea they are trying to patent is that, in a 3D world, when you turn the camera to look a given direction, you should only see some avatars, and not others (that is, only the ones in your field of view). Additionally, if there are a lot of avatars, this patent claims protection for the idea that the client can implement a maximum number of avatars to display, and to use the knowledge of the maximum number to display, combined with the position information, to determine some subset of the avatars to display (presumably the X nearest avatars, where X is the maximum number to display, though the patent doesn't specify this explicitly).
I'd be shocked if EQ and Meridian59 didn't both do these things several years before this patent app was filed.
I'd also like to point out, that the patent doesn't specify 'camera orientation' or 'client view orientation' (even though that appears to be what they are trying to cover), but rather 'avatar orientation' (which suggests to me that this patent would only apply to MMOGs where the camera orientation is locked to the avatar orientation). Based on my 3+ years of playing CoH, I can tell you that the CoH client doesn't determine which other avatars to show on screen based on the orientation of my avatar - I can spin the camera freely to point in any direction, even look completely backwards from the direction my avatar is facing, so I suspect that NCSoft could claim that as a defense, if they had to.
Also, I think they could, maybe, make a defense against claim 6 (I'm not sure though):
Now, I could be wrong here, but I thought most client/server 3D game protocols do *not* have the clients transmit the position of the avatar to the server, which is part (b)? Don't the servers already know the position of the avatar, and the clients just send a vector, that is, a request to move a certain number of units in a particular direction, at which point the server calculates a new position from the original posti
If this is how game companies are going to act I call for a full out boycott of Worlds.com.
You hate them, but you want them to perform an intimate sexual act on you. You sir, have a conflicted personality and should seek professional help.
city of heroes mission architect is what is infringing.
NCSoft has Lineage and Lineage II which, though not very popular in the US, I believe are very popular in Korea (which is where NCSoft started). As the other poster in this thread commented, the City of Heroes/City of Villains game, as far as I know, is still quite popular and is making money. Sure, Tabula Rasa is being shut down, but where are you getting the idea that the whole company is going bankrupt?
From the patent itself: Related U.S. Application Data
(63) Continuation of application No. 08/747,420, filed on Nov. 12, 1996, now Pat. No. 6,219,045.
Now educate yourself on continuing patents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application
Now look at the dates for release of Ultima Online and Everquest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest
People on Slashdot discussing the Law sound as informed as your average senior citizen would sound on here discussing tech. "I PUT THE ETHERNET INTO THE HARD DRIVE WHY DOESN'T MY AOL WORK?!"
There's a reason why people spend three years of their life in law school. It's not for their health.
Going only on your description, I'd say Habitat for sure.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
From the patent itself: Related U.S. Application Data
(63) Continuation of application No. 08/747,420, filed on Nov. 12, 1996, now Pat. No. 6,219,045.
Now educate yourself on continuing patents:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuing_patent_application
Now look at the dates for release of Ultima Online and Everquest:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_online
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everquest
Also if you look at the claims for the patent it requires CLIENT software that does considerably more client-state tracking than Telnet ever did for text muds.
Is that your answer for the FBI Code Cracking Challenge?
Back in the 1980s one thing RCA Aerospace & Defense did was 3d simulators used for military training. The machines were huge, but were designed for, and provided, scalable 3d worlds with which trainees interacted in real time. The Florida operations were the location where this was; I remember visiting there and seeing demos.
legal and patent system can be THIS exploited.
those people very well know that prior art can be proven against them. but, they are taking an opportunity.
the same environment which allowed finance companies to make a total wreck of economy, bolsters such opportunism. these people produce nothing, provide nothing for betterment of society or mankind, serve nothing to nobody. instead, they exploit.
you people really need to overhaul your entire country.
Read radical news here
Could someone explain what the patent is about in a more clear fashion...say using an automotive metaphor?
From working with the Torque Game Engine a while back - which was based on the Tribes engine (I think originally from 1998 but I might be wrong) - I think TGE works exactly like this in multiplayer mode. There's a central server that controls object position/etc so even if it's not a traditional MMO framework I think it fit's the bill.
DIVE seems to have done all this as early as 1993.
Considering half the content posted there is about the legalities and the rest of it appears to be a poorly implemented cathouse-in-3D -- if the lawyers won't bury this, the players should just on a premise of how crap-tastic worlds.com's website is.
since your examples are simply more instances of prior art.
you'll need to wade your way through 35 USC s102 and related case law to know whether alleged prior art defeated the novelty of this patent.
Yeah thats pretty much NCSofts job here.
How does that invalidate my *swish* ?
Yes.
These folks are one big joke. I'd almost suggest going to their site to laugh at them but that'd give them the attention that they're looking for. They're essentially a DOT COM era virtual worlds company that some how managed to snag Spielberg, Bowie, Compaq and a couple other folks to toss them a combined $22M. The net result was a patent app and a really, really lame 3D engine. I don't know how they managed, but some how they were able to hang on to enough of that venture capital to retain intellectual property law firm, Lerner David Littenberg Krumholz & Mentlik LLP (LDLKM), to enforce Worlds' recently granted patents.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
I haven't read the patent but the 1996 date will only be applicable to any parts of the claims that are supported by the specification as filed in 1996. Any new material in the claims will get the new date. But you probably knew this since you are a law student.
I don't know but do any of NCSoft games actually communicate with the servers thru port 80 as the patent states?
And with http protocols?
I've huge doubts.
Actually making a game like the patent specifies would be:
a) Lag feast; ;)
b) Completly void of security;
No.
Not to mention Guild Wars, which is still very popular world wide. Me thinks someone has misinterpreted the shut down of tabula rasa as more than just a decision to remove some dead wood
This idea was at least described in early cyberpunk literature as an idea. I BELIEVE it was in Neuromancer, and I'm almost certain that the ideas were discussed in both GURPS Cyberpunk and Shadowrun. An argument could be made that this is no more than a spun up version of some prior ideas. The idea CERTAINLY wasn't new in 2000.
Besides the oodles of prior art this patent is obvious. There is no other way any online game could be made so this patent should be thrown out based on that. Patents are meant to be non-obvious. When you read a patent you should go "wow, what a great idea". Not "Of course you dumbass."
Read my short stories - You won't regret it.
Avatars interacting in a 3D virtual world etc. ... When will the USPTO stop being so dumb?
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
Nothing in the patent defines MMORPG or even MMOG. Since it's so broad you can argue that Doom (1993) is an MMOG since it allows more than one person in a (3D) environment (the patent does not state 3D polygons) to "interact" with each other, see each others avatars orientation and chat "taunt" each other. It doesn't even define any client/server architecture so even dialing into Twain on a 14.4k modem would fall under this patent.
I presented public lectures on a system I developed called Cyberterm, back in the early 90s. I presented lectures at UK VR_SIG Meeting at deMontfort University in Leicester in 1995 and at the HITL (Human Interface Technology Lab) at the University of Washington in that same year. I can name names or people in attendance if required.
Each talk was advertised and attended by the general public and outlined Cyberterm's use of pretty much exactly the system described in the patent (which I had up and running at the time). The system had also been demonstrated to numerous other people around the world at the time and since then and was written about in WAVE and Virtual magazines in the late 90s and described in written detail in many online papers as well as a series of ariticles in the PCVR-Magazine (also in the late 90s). Some of these articles are still available online archived by the HITL Librarian.
As the author of this system and the underlying technology, I would say I have some copyright ownership of the technology I developed. I still have archives of the earlier code and it runs with a copyright message.
I'll be happy to claim a big chunk of any money worlds.com make. Patent attorneys and lawyers of other companies (NC-Soft for instance) wishing to defend themselves can contact me via linkedin.com (amongst other places).
pithy comment
The claims describe managing an avatar display list on the client, such that avatars which are too far from the client's avatar, or too far past the sides of the field of view, fall off the list, and that the client only displays up to a certain number of nearby avatars.
A whole lot of MMO shops use display list clipping because they're a stock way to keep the frame rate up. It is the kind of stuff that has been done in viewing parts of 3D virtual space since the 70s.
I guess the novelty justifying the patent is combining the display list with the client being responsible for deciding what to clip, and with 3D avatars. Looking at the huge number of MMOs out there that do this exact sort of thing, I have to wonder just how novel the basis for the patent really is.
Prior art might be found by studying the code for XTrek, based on Empire for PLATO. If spaceship doesn't fall within the viewport for the universe, don't draw it, and I believe XTrek was client-server, but not 3D.
Dont get too angry at the patent examiner, back in 2000 there weren't alot of the tools available to "find" some things as prior art.
But, Given they were doing this some time before 2000 and keep in mind there wasn't much before 2000 aside from EQ. At least not in the commercial MMO sense. So to say they were the first to do it holds some water in some specific scenarios.
However, there is alot of prior art in the persistent world, personallized avatar scene. In 1998 I was even working in the 3d gaming industry, though not in this particular area.
I do remember as early as '96/'95 playing the first quake "beta", and prior to that doom (Though doom was only partly 3d - many sprites and didnt actually deal with verticals at all). But both engines were made public and there was alot of custom games written from both. There was one I used to play at lan parties based off quake that allowed people to customize avatars. Sure, we didnt have the detail algorithms that they do today back then, but we did have mip-mapping, and sure, we had max 16 players (depending on the game itself and its server) and the game was non-persistant.
But, when you read the the patent claim the various quake mods do actually qualify. They didn't keep objects in an RDBMS, but they did have their own database - though it was quite simple. What also qualifies are things like battle net (im not sure if that was pre-2000 or not) and so forth.
Also keep in mind, while worlds.com may be suing a game company there are more then just games at stake.
There were several experiments I played with based on the persistent-world idea using the quake client (or at least, its ideas). They weren't much, and they weren't commercial, but EQ was an evolution of many ideas that came before it (including the various experiments based on the quake client and various extensions to the MUD concept).
I even remember a very simple java-based persistent world that didn't live very long (while I was back at uni) where people would interact with those around them (in a non-i-want-to-shoot-you sense).
But when you read the patent, its hard to see it surviving simply because of the prior art. If you only took EQ into account (and that would be a ridiculous notion).
You might have to go back to places like the funet and (i cant remember the others, but there was a few great places to get shareware/FOSS/software legally back prior to things like sourceforge, google code, and the various download archives like tucows), i think one was called simtel as well, but there were many more. I even have pressed CD's from '94 (still on my desk) that contain archives of them (infomagic cd's if anyone remembers them, the best way of getting your hands on linux at the time because downloading it onto floppies was pure pain and there was no such thing as "burning" a cd or usb hard drives).
However, I digress. I remember one of those little java (or something) based multi-user (kind of like a 3d muck that was like an irc client with a physical dimension) programs floating around one of those mirrors.
But at the crux of the matter what I believe is that software patents should bite the bullet and be gotten rid of. Its a ridiculous notion. I also believe patent examiners should be gotten rid of. They do nothing except hold up the patent process, they rarely get it right and in reality someone who just checks the format of the patent would be good enough. Then have a penalty system that punishes people for publishing patents where prior art existed so long as you can prove the information for the prior art was public prior to the patent (and lets face it, patent cases go on for years already, this wouldn't make it any worse). Just leave it up to the public to do the due diligence. Make it so expensive to get it wrong that people who submit patents are going to pay a big price for getting it wrong.
That is enough to say "Let it happen".
Condoning and cultivating goldfarmer rule violations in prohibited realms is deserving of some smiting.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Meridian 59 got released in December 1995, nearly an year before the patent was filed (November 1996).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59
http://meridian59.neardeathstudios.com/
I used to mod a quake engine, and this patent looks trivial to me. Is something anyone building a 3D engine can add to the game. A patent sould be about something no-obvious. And this is obvious (now and then).
-Woof woof woof!
This is something we were working on from 1998. We documented the design in some detail, and I released the documentation to prevent people from trying to patent it: http://www.annexia.org/freeware/fleet
The innovation in this (never-built) MMO is that the design requires no server at all. It what might now be called "P2P" (although that term wasn't around at the time).
Rich.
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Patent Troll hits you for 3 damage.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Just some examples of people interacting as avatars in a virtual 3d environment.
Distributed Interactive Simulation (DIS) protocol supports a number of dead reckoning algorithms, from simple first order position to rate of turn and acceleration. An IEEE standard since '97, I believe. See here.
Slashdot's name? When my compiler sees
If those fuckers get GW shut down before my ranger gets to finish Underworld, I'm gonna be eatin' somebody's baby...
Guys, need not to worry, This patent is considered invalid since the original patent pertains to 1st person view and not 3rd person view. NCSoft can easily bypass this by making sure their software never goes into 1st person view. Therefore, it invalidates worlds.com patent against NCSoft.
Here is the quote from the patent:
"In a preferred embodiment a plurality of users interact in the three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where each user executes a client process to view a virtual world from the perspective of that user." eg: 1st person view mode.
Since Guild Wars is a 3rd person view mode, the lawsuit is invalid. Not sure about all the other games but to fix the issue, you need to get out of 1st person view mode to put you on the legal side.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
There is a few games that was released before 2000.
Meridian 59 - Released in 1996
Everquest - Released in 1999
Asheron's Call - Released in 1999
This is according to:
http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/show/all/sCol/estimatedRelease/sOrder/asc
This patent falls down on the fact that it describes the natural way to code a MMOG and its client by a skilled practitioner in the subject area. Consequently the patent restricts a natural mental process and is inherently invalid.
It could only have been granted through ignorance at the USPTO.
Checked out this guy Adler online. He patents everything he thinks up but he doesn't publish.
http://www.fastcoder.net/~thumper/resume/resume-thumper.pdf
VRML did all this andmore , you were able tomake an entire virtual world , create avatars and move about and even interact.
Last i checked thats definately prior art
VRML
Virtual reality Modeling Language
STUFF PATENTS, waste a money, time and efforts and they actually stiffle computer innovations
"System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space"
I'm pretty sure Richard Garriott had been there done that before the year 2000.
I haven't read the article or the patents, but, did they actually invent something or just brainstorm on a topic until they had some fodder to fill in the blanks on a patent application?
If there's no invention, why the hell should there be a patent. A patent was supposed to cover a specific implementation not an ethereal concept with no product to back it up.
Just my 2 cents.
Shop smart, Shop S-Mart.
I sure as hell hope so. I play Guild Wars damn near daily. I just finally picked up the Eye of the North expansion, have been playing for years and haven't even made my way fully through PROPHECIES yet, much less Factions and Nightfall.
Of course, all that time I've been spending getting my Perma-Pre E/Mo character to level up has kept me isolated in a fairly small portion of that world. But I'll be damned if I don't love it. My teen son also plays regularly as well as my nephew and they both have all the Guild Wars campaigns. I am missing only Nightfall. But I figure by the time I get 'round to exploring Nightfall it'll be 2012.
Square Enix's patent on ATB
http://www.virtualworldsreview.com/cybertown/ launched 1995 I was there, I rest my case. Copyright as a concept is flawed in its' current state it has turned essentialy into a domain grab to patent all existing ideas to you can claim credit for them. peronal views: No single human being has the right to claim any information to be 100% original, you think with our sociaty and the existing culture, language, science, art, etc... that you would be able to come up with that idea in the first place? If you were born truly alone into this world, you would be no better than any animal in the wild. what you take away from the masses for your own gains, you did not intend to give back in the first place.
I used this WorldsChat thing back in 1999 when I got on the interwebs for the first time. It looked exactly as it does in the patent filing, penguins and all. Oh those were the days. Also, Meridian 59 was a 3D MMORPG that existed at that same time if not before.
Yes, prior art certainly exists and I'm glad it's going to be so easy to find but I did have a tinge of nostalgia creep up when I saw those drawings.
You report, Slashdot decides
Prevueing you're poast ownly hellps iff ewe no how two spel inn teh furst plase
The 3D variant of Spacewar at MIT played on the pdp1x was there by 1975 or 1976 at least, and used a 3d world with avatars, feedback etc. It was a large universe and not as good gameplay as 2D spacewar (you spent most of your time trying to find your opponent) but it was a 3D universe and used field of vision etc. and range etc. The code and concept were certainly available to anyone wanting them back then (though you needed a pdp1x to play it, and there was only the one of those, a result of many years of MIT students adding instructions to a pdp1 that DEC had donated). It was written in assembly language of course. Still, prior art from 25 years before...
Sounds very similar to the old .com, VIOS. While the patent was for "Systems, methods, and computer program products for accessing, leasing, relocating, constructing and modifying internet sites within a multi-dimensional virtual reality environment" the implementation was very similar to MMORPGs and it was granted in '99.
Bark less. Wag more.
From my experiences in mid-1990s technology:
Doom - 1993 by ID Software
AlphaWorld (now Active Worlds) - 1995 by Knowledge Adventure Worlds (developed in 1994)
Meridian 59 - 1996 by 3DO (developed in 1995)
-Valen
For those not willing to click through and read:
Abstract
"The present invention provides a highly scalable architecture for a three-dimensional graphical, multi-user, interactive virtual world system. In a preferred embodiment a plurality of users interact in the three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where each user executes a client process to view a virtual world from the perspective of that user. The virtual world shows avatars representing the other users who are neighbors of the user viewing the virtual word. In order that the view can be updated to reflect the motion of the remote user's avatars, motion, information is transmitted to a central server process which provides positions updates to client processes for neighbors of the user at that client process. The client process also uses an environment database to determine which background objects to render as well as to limit the movement of the user's avatar."
So basically they are trying to patent everyone from William Gibson to Neal Stephenson to Rudy Rucker's version of 'cyberspace' or whatnot. And I do think UO and EQ definitely beat them to the punch as far as implementation.
Go get 'em!
I mean, uh, .... wankers!
Edith Keeler Must Die
As mentioned on Scott Jennings website, http://www.brokentoys.org/2008/12/29/our-legal-system-continues-to-suffer-from-random-drooling/#comments, this is another case of a patent pirate. Worlds.com is more than likely aware their case has no chance in hell, however, for a flailing company like NCSoft, mounting a defense is costly and they will more than likely settle.
Patent ideas that are general and obvious to even non-technically trained people and you can get rich quick by working the patent system. Even the Nigerian scammers will be jealous of this one once they get to World of Warcraft and Everquest.
2. The method of claim 1, further comprising the steps of
(c) monitoring an orientation of the first user's avatar; and
(d) displaying the set of the other users' avatars from based on the orientation of the first user's avatar as monitored is step (c),
wherein steps (c) and (d) are performed by the client process associated with the first user.
So as long as they do the avatar culling based on something other than the orientation of the avatar itself, the patent doesn't apply.
I can think of about 1,000 ways to do this (which would actually work better & more realistically) but won't mention them here just in case those asshole patent trolls are reading /.
Given:
I conclude that it is time to place a bounty on lawyers and issue hunting licenses to the poor.
Orwell: "In a Time of Universal Deceit, telling the Truth is a Revolutionary Act"
must be americans ...