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Major MMO Publishers Sued For Patent Infringement
GameboyRMH writes "The Boston Globe reports that major MMO publishers (Blizzard, Turbine, SOE, NCSoft, and Jagex) are being sued by Paltalk, which holds a patent on 'sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment' — a patent that would seem to apply to any multiplayer game played between multiple systems, at the very least. Paltalk has already received an out-of-court settlement from Microsoft earlier this year in relation to a lawsuit over the Halo games. If Microsoft can't fend off Paltalk's legal attacks, the odds don't look good for their latest group of targets."
The good thing is that Blizzard should have enough resources to blow that patent out of the water.
And Microsoft didn't?
One would assume that M$ (only using the $ for relevance) found that it would be simpler and cheaper to just pay a (probably) small fee than spend years in court al la SCO. Therefore Blizzard probably would do the same, although this isn't core business to Microsoft but *is* to Blizzard so they might want to defend.
Perhaps it's because companies don't fight these claims often enough, that software patents continue to eat up our sanity.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
I didn't check the date of the pattent, but it may be interresting to check if MUD preclude this patent... Another kind of program that may preclude is some BBS doors and some programs that may have existed during the Spectrum/Commodore/Amstrad/... time
Back when I was doing my PhD, I (together with a friend) wrote a networked game called Xanadu (Xanadu - A New Adventure Dungeon Underground was the rather strained recursive acronym) for X workstations. We even connected across London from different colleges to the same server running on my Decstation 3100. That was in 1991, which seems to handily predate these patents. I still have a backup CDROM of the source code alongside all of my other (thesis) code ...
:)
:)
I remember pulling all-nighters in college, and I specifically remember the first time we successfully connected using the commandline client and moved a character from X,Y to X,Y+1, thus validating the movement routines - there were a lot of firsts for us back in that code: socket programming (thankyou Stevens), bitfields in structures, function pointer tables, etc. To see it all work at 3:00 am was a major high. Kid's stuff today, of course
Anyway, much as I'd love to think of myself as a prodigy, it seems this patent falls afoul of the obvious clause, and if blizzard or whomever want to get in touch for some patent-busting source code, just feel free
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Can someone who is knowledgeable about patent law explain to me how one district in the US can be so appealing for this kind of ligitgation when another is not?
I was under the impression that patents are awarded federally, however it seems that the actions are being taken at a very specific locality which is widely considered more sympathetic than everywhere else, rather than a national or federal court.
This seems very strange to me, surely the legal position on a federal issue should be consistent across the nation. Or the verdicts across low level courts should be able to be 'moderated'.
If this were really happening, what would you think?
How about IRC?
While I agree with your sentiment, the problem is not exclusive to the USA. Every country seems to have a large number of people who are very impressionable and don't think critically enough. These people don't read enough books/articles to develop a well grounded worldview, and attempts to enlighten them are almost always futile. If half the country thinks it would be a good idea to elect Bush twice, what exactly am I supposed to do about it? If I was Venezuelan, what do you recommend I do to get rid of Chavez, or Castro, or the Chinese Communist Party? Even if most Iranians would rather not be ruled by the Ayatollah, it's not like they have much choice in the matter.
Assholes rule over idiots, it always has been that way and always will be. The only way to make a better society is to educate people to the point where they are capable of telling the difference between assholes, idiots, and smart well intentioned people.
Patent 5822523, summarised:
The number of communications required to keep a game with N players updated with each other is O(N!). This patent suggests a method by which the communications are sent to a central server, with the server sending regular updates to each player of all the actions taken by the other N-1 players.
So far it sounds exactly like how a MUD works.
The server includes the ability for clients to become part of a "group" which further limits the amount of communication required to something less than O(N). The patent attempts to claim the Nagle algorithm as a unique invention (ie: hold on to outgoing messages for a short time to potentially squeeze more data into one packet).
"Group" in this context would be similar to "instance" in World of Warcraft or "grid" in EVE Online.
I'm not familiar with WoW or EVE terminology, but is there any chance that this might be similar to a "room" in a MUD?
Yes, because they are doing business in the USA. They can not bother turning up in court, but then there will probably be a summary injunction against them preventing credit card processors in the USA from handing over any money to them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I agree with you, it looks very weak to me. As I understood it when I was a child, the universities and such dealing with virtual environments (3d worlds) obviously wanted multiple users to share the same environment and experience the events/occurrences at the same time, just like in the real world.
It seems to me that this patent completely fails the obviousness test with MMOs are VR Worlds.
Here's hoping the judge smacks them down.