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."

Comments

Re:My first thought

[negRo_slim]

I'm tired and going to bed but a quick Google netted patent 5822523. http://www.google.com/patents?vid=USPAT5822523

You're damn right it is too broad

[Norsefire]

Shared data creating a digital environment ... that could apply to Git, Subversion, Remote desktop, shell servers, IRC...

The good thing is that Blizzard should have enough resources to blow that patent out of the water.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[Arimus]

Err... Microsoft coughed up over Halo, and I'd bet MS have more laywers to parachute in than Blizzard could even dream of.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[Don_dumb]

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.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[vxvxvxvx]

Also possible that Paltalk offered to settle for some trivially small amount of money, in order to make their claims look more legit. If they can claim they sued MS and settled it may scare others, even if the settlement was $0.02. Just keep the amount confidential and nobody has to know.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[asmussen]

Just because Microsoft coughed up a settlement doesn't mean that Microsoft doesn't have the resources to beat a lawsuit over the issue. It just means that their bean counters did some math and decided that it would cost less to pay these guys off than it would to fight them. Blizzard may decide to react differently, particularly since their flagship cash cow product is being attacked. We might have seen a different reaction from Microsoft had it been Windows that the lawsuit claimed infringed on their patent.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[Teancum]

I don't understand why so many geeks on Slashdot have no concept how the patent system "works".

I think geeks on Slashdot know all too well how patents work... it is just a concept so alien to their way of thinking that they think the politicians and lawyers who came up with the concept of software patents are the clueless ones here.

Most geeks and in particular software developer geeks come up with novel ideas so quickly and so frequently that they find even taking the time to write up a patent to be something hardly worth the effort and slows their thinking down. How much uncommented/undocumented software do you think exists?

There is also a hacker (both black hat and white hat communities) philosophy of sharing information and techniques... where somebody who comes up with a novel algorithm gains respect within the community by virtue of the prestige for how often that algorithm is copied by everybody else. In other words, software developers are proud if their algorithm (particularly if their name is attacked to it like the LZW algorithm) and it is commonly used. This actually comes from the mathematics community, where mathematical theorems have a similar kind of reception between fellow mathematicians. Unfortunately for hackers and geeks, a good algorithm is seen as a cash cow.

The current patent laws explicitly prohibit patents on mathematical theorems... and in fact the language used is that mathematical formulas are exempt from patent protection. The argument used by software developers is that an algorithm is only a mathematical construct. Unfortunately, almost anything expressed as an algorithm can also be implemented as a representation of digital gates in hardware, so the algorithm can also be turned into a physical device that is tangible and made up of discrete components. That makes it patentable. BTW, the opposite is also true for most digital electronics, where hardware can be described in software... hence programmable logic.

As for the logic of allowing business methods as patentable concepts... I'll leave that to a whole other discussion. That is also something very recent, and IMHO just as harmful to the concept of a patent as software patents. Your description of selling baked goods via IRC is precisely one of these stupid business method patents that have perverted the concept of patents well beyond the initial intentions of the framers of the U.S. Constitution and why patent laws were originally developed.

A device that reproduces sound via recording the noise and allowing it to be played back... that is an invention worthy of a patent. Thomas Edison clearly deserved kudos and the protection for coming up with that idea initially. Patents were intended to protect physical devices from being copied due to the difficulty in doing the engineering and the infrastructure necessary to get those devices produced in the first place, so the government was willing to grant a temporary (read TEMPORARY! ) monopoly over the concept to get the inventor of the idea established in the marketplace and recoup the R&D costs that the copy-cats wouldn't have to deal with. For most software patents, that is hardly the issue at all, and certainly isn't the case with business patents.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[Theaetetus]

I can patent a method of using IRC to arrange the delivery of baked goods and that would be a valid patent (actually, it's probably already patented).

No idea whether it would be valid legally because the patent office is out with the fairies but it shouldn't be valid. That's just a particular instance of the use of IRC which is a general purpose communication medium. Because it is a general purpose communication medium no patent for a specific instance of that communication should be possible. An "instance of" relation not a "use of" relation. An "instance of" relation should never be patentable because there is always prior art.

The patent office, and you to some degree, seem to be confused about the difference between words and ideas (is a file system a database?), whether ideas are the same and different (are two shades of the color orange the same or different?) and whether one idea is contained by another (is using a car to move something different from using a vehicle to move something?). The patent office doesn't seem to understand even simple concepts like Venn diagrams and the fact that words and meanings have varying overlaps and relationships. Specifically, patenting something simply because somebody has renamed and reduced the coverage of an existing concept should not be possible.

---

Every new patent is a new law; another opportunity for a lawyer to make money at the expense of the wider community.

You're absolutely right. All of those legal scholars, judges, lawyers, etc. who have studied and written about patent law in depth don't understand simple concepts like Venn diagrams. You are clearly the only one who has ever put any real thought into this.

Or not. You know how people complain that patents (and legislation, for that matter) isn't written in plain English? That's because "plain English" is notoriously vague and nuanced. Your examples - two shades of orange, a file system vs. database, using a car vs. using a vehicle - expose this flaw. Is a file system different from a database? It depends how you define the two terms. Is using a car different than using a helicopter? Yes, even though they're both vehicles. Is light at 590nm different than light at 635nm? They're both orange...

You say that GP's example of using IRC to arrange the delivery of baked goods shouldn't be valid because "it's a particular instance of the use of IRC which is a general purpose communication medium". You missed his entire point - he wasn't claiming IRC, he was claiming a method of delivering goods. Does IRC deliver baked goods? Then IRC being a 'general purpose communication medium' is irrelevant.

Re:You're damn right it is too broad

[smartr]

Of course if you pay Z to settle, you increase the factor that other trolls will come after you. Bobby Kotick, CEO of Activision Blizzard, seems to have directed his company to take the approach of fighting everything in court tooth and nail. Even things you would not expect, like passed down arbitration on old Sierra IP's... How does one fight arbitration? I have no clue, but the attorneys found something to fight. My prediction would be these trolls are stepping over the line and will get clubbed. I suppose there is some slim chance they could win.

digital TV?

[Chrisq]

'sharing data among many connected computers so that all users see the same digital environment'

Well there goes digital TV then....

Is a web page a digital environment?

[popo]

... because if it is, that's a whole lot of prior art...

Not so fast...

[RyuuzakiTetsuya]

Sometimes it's cheaper to just pay off the plaintiff than to litigate. Blizzard has deeeeeeeeeeep pockets and has a reason to fight this. Let's see where this goes.

Re:Uh... Nethack anyone

[DrXym]

Nethack isn't multi-user, but there are plenty of multi-player games both graphical and otherwise going back YEARS. Various versions of MUD would fit the bill, as would games like Netrek, Ultima Online, etc. Even many Amiga / ST games let people connect 2 or more systems with serial cables for primitive network gaming.

Prior Art : MUD, BBS Doors, ... ?

[Vapula]

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

Re:My first thought

[Grail]

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. 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.

If someone can explain how this is not an obvious solution to the problem, as evidenced by the parallel development of this technology by every MMO out there, I'd love to hear it.

Not prior art

[maroberts]

The patent seem to be about reducing network traffic on multi-server systems, and having some way of aggregating messages to groups of clients. I think most early MUDs are single server systems connecting directly to clients and unlikely to be prior art.

Re:Not prior art

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like IRC then?

Re:Not prior art

[Teancum]

I remember several discussions among writers of the early MUDs (about 1990 or so... on USENET?) that involved aggregation of character data between multiple servers and allowing players to move from one "world" to the next. Some of this was simply copying character data, but it also involved direct links between servers... where players moving from one "room" to the next could switch to a different server and have it appear seamless to somebody playing within the MUD.

Obviously this was for MUD servers of the same "class" where data would be shared, but the data sharing concepts were discussed including IP (internet protocol) packet standards that would be used for sharing user data and even "world" data between servers.

I do think some prior art could be pulled up from these discussions, and there certainly is nothing that current MMORPGs provide other than graphics that hasn't already been done in abundance more than two decades ago with the old text-based MUDs, MOOs, and MUSHes. If anything, those experiments are still ahead of the game other than providing a snazzy client interface. Unless it is a patent on how to efficiently render 3D graphics on extremely low bandwidth, I don't see how there could be anything genuinely novel that isn't nearly 20 years old or much older anyway.

FYI, the DIKU MUD, while an early pioneer, wasn't the first. Multiplayer virtual combat games go back to at least 1980, and the real classic, ADVENT (Will Crowther's Colossal Cave Adventure) came out in 1976... and was the real inspiration for most subsequent MUDs even if it wasn't necessarily "multi-player". The desire to make it multi-player, however, did become something to push people along. There were other multi-player combat games that are of a similar age that had to deal with these issues as well, some of which I did play in the 1970's.

Re:Not prior art

[Fred_A]

The patent seem to be about reducing network traffic on multi-server systems, and having some way of aggregating messages to groups of clients.

Are you sure it's not about getting large sums of money from other companies without having to do any actual work ?

Re:My first thought

[putaro]

If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.

Re:My first thought

[Space cowboy]

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

Obviously IANAL or a USian

[Don_dumb]

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'.

Re:Obviously IANAL or a USian

[OrangeTide]

The vast majority of civil cases are carried out through state courts. Each state has slightly different protocols and procedures. And if the order of a lower court is inconsistent with federal law, it is possible to bring a case up to a higher court. But this costs additional time and money.

In many ways the US is still a confederation of small pseudo-nations, although that has been changing rapidly for the past 100 years.

Also it's a matter of perspective, to me it would be strange for a single system to centrally govern 300 million people.

Re:Obviously IANAL or a USian

[maroberts]

Each District (and Circuit) has procedural rules, which may or may not be favourable to the conduct of certain types of cases, and in addition the fact that a lot of Patent cases get done in this one district means that lots of patent lawyers hang out there. It's sort of a positive feedback loop...

Re:Obviously IANAL or a USian

[Don_dumb]

Thanks that does help. If I understand correctly elevation acts as the moderation, why doesn't this happen more often to prevent this court being such a troll haven? Or is it just that lots of patent lawyers remain (the sibling post by maroberts surmises)

PS I'm not saying that I beleive a single system should entriely govern 300 million people but if something is determined at the national level then the application of that should be consistent across the nation. Impossible I know but it seems this place is blatantly out of line with the rest of the country, perhaps even trying to be so. The federal authorities should at least be trying to prevent what we call here in Britain "a postcode lottery".

Re:My first thought

[xmundt]

And in a good example of previous art, MANY years ago, I used a chat program called "powwow" (yes, created by the Native American community), that not only allowed group interactions, but, had shared games, and the ability to surf the Net as a group (one URL click would take the entire group to that website) and many other group interactions.
            Since this pedated paltalk, I suspect that the awards should go someplace BESIDES into their pocket.
          here are some comments about Powwow....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paltalk

Re:Doom multiplayer video came out in 1993

[gnupun]

Reading dozens of pages of legal patent-speak is not easy, but the main gist of the patent 5,822,523 is in claim 1 (paraphrased into english):

• A bunch of game clients send messages to a game server
• The game server collects these messages for a fixed period of time and aggregates all these messages into a big, aggregated message.
• Once a fixed time interval has elapsed, the game server transmits the big, aggregated message back to all the clients. The clients then use this aggregated message to display the same shared environment on all machines

Seems obvious to me now, but it may have not been obvious in 1996. If you can prove Doom follows the same steps (isn't the source code available?), then there's prior art to invalidate it.

Re:My first thought

[Thanshin]

Since this pedated paltalk, [...]

Pedated?

Did it molest paltalk when it was young?

Re:Let's patent patenting

[Shikaku]

I already claimed a 1 to infinite recursion of the patent patenting patenting .... patent.

Sorry buddy.

(Oh, I also claimed the infinity + 1 recursive patent)

((I also claimed the grammar nazi patent. "a 1" is correct because you don't use "an won", for won is a homophone to one))

Sorta

[Moraelin]

As usual, Slashdot's summaries are the "OMG, here's a broad mis-representation of the patent, so we can whine about it" trolling. I swear if someone invented a new clock mechanism, it would come out on Slashdot as "OMG, they're patenting the cog." Because apparently some people just try that hard to belong to a big family of clueless whiners.

Actually searching for HearMe's patents (since TFA mentions that the patent was bought from HearMe) actually shows that they're a bit more speciffic than "showing the same world on two PCs". Not by much, mind you, but still. So the actual debate would be whether it's a multiplayer game, but whether it implements the exact synchronization algorithm described there.

And if you want to help those companies, knowing what they need help with, might help more. And just "it was a multiplayer" game ain't it.

The actual patents that seem even remotely relevant are these:

1. Method and apparatus for loosely synchronizing closed free running raster displays

The problem is that I can't see how it even remotely applies to multiplayer games, except via an equivocation fallacy. It's about "seeing the same thing" in a much more literal way: literally seeing not just the same scene, but the exact same image and synchronizing the frames. As in, the VSync signal comes at the same moment.

I don't think any game does that at all.

It includes such tidbits as temporarily changing the video mode to interlaced (which should look the same, according to them -- except to anyone who isn't blind, it isn't), to change the timings on one monitor, then switch back to non-interlaced when the sync signals synchronized with each other.

Again, I don't think any actual game does that. I don't think interlaced modes are even used at all nowadays.

The second problem with it, is that it's been filed on 23 December 1997, i.e., a good 3 months after the launch of Ultima Online. So if they actually want to push the "it's about seeing the same thing" equivocation, it seems to me the defense doesn't even have to go as far back in time as your Xanadu. UO already showed the same thing.

2. Server-group messaging system for interactive applications

Basically this one is about this: you have a server and X clients, and all clients are sending packets to all other clients. Think, an IRC channel, basically. So they propose that instead of dumbly routing between clients, the server aggregates the packets and sends the aggregates periodically.

The first problem is that a MMO only does that in a very loose sense. It sends the resulting status, rather than the bundled messages from all other players.

The second problem is that even if they want to push the equivocation that that status processing is a form of aggregation, MUDs already did that. Whenever you entered a room and god a "PrincessLayMe and MrMacho are standing here", it was effectively an aggregate result of the previous movements of the two players.

Of course, this has the caveat that their patent actually mentions aggregating over an interval, and sending the status periodicially, which MUDs did not.

However here comes the third problem: the patent was applied in 1999, a solid two years after UO which _did_ do just that.

Does MS actually WANT to "fend off"?

[jurgen]

Microsoft might not want to "fend off" some legal attacks... by paying a settlement, which they can easily do, they give the trolls the means to attack others who might NOT be able to afford a settlement, thus clearing the battlefield, err, market, for Microsoft's products.

I have no idea if this applies here, but this isn't cynicism... Corporations DO think this way. There is no morality involved, only the logic of competition in the markets, and there are no questions of legality, only those of court and settlement costs vs potential profits.

Re:Only in Shitmerica.

[American Terrorist]

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.

Re:My first thought

[mcvos]

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?

Just to clarify

[Moraelin]

Just to clarify, after reading the patents a bit, HearMe does look to me like a bit of a patent troll or potential patent troll. Everything reads like the kind of guess about what a game might need, by someone who never actually programmed a game.

E.g., trying to sychronize the VSync on two computers seems such a profoundly useless and counter-productive thing, that it boggles the mind. Let's just say it would prevent the following 3 people from playing together:

- Tom, who has a 60 Hz TFT

- Dick, who plays on a CRT in 85 Hz

- Harry, who bought one of the new bundles of NVidia 3D glasses and a 120 Hz monitor required for it

It's not just that any synchronization in the sync signal would last exactly one frame, it's that forcing the 3 computers to display the exact same image would prevent Harry from getting any stereoscopic 3D effect. (He needs alternating frames rendered from slightly different view points, which the other two don't and it would make them see double if they did.)

E.g., just collecting and routing aggregates is

1. Useless in that literal form not only for games, but for IM clients too (which seems to be all that HearMe actually did make). If the messages in a chat room are that fast that you gain anything with an aggregation time so small that it's unnoticeable to users, then it'll scroll too fast to read anyway. And if you aggregate over several seconds, it produces abrupt chunks of scrolling that actually are disruptive and annoying.

2. Already done pretty much anyone who ever wrote a batch job that runs periodically. And I'm pretty sure that, for example, that FidoNet already worked that way.

Ah, wait, they have the patent troll "over the internet" clause. And FidoNet wasn't over the Internet. Sorry.

Well, even then I'm pretty sure at least some mail servers and NNTP servers work exactly that way. For a backbone system, the mail or news servers down the line are the "clients", and it aggregates the mails or news items instead of routing each individually to each client.

Re:My first thought

[Fred_A]

My first thought was this is great anything to force innovation. Something more then the same old, same old in MMO gaming.

  But then again sounds a bit broad, as do many a patent these days.

On the other hand, an online game where none of the players would share the same environment would be more challenging !

- So shall we conquer the castle ? You have flaming arrows, right ?
- I'm feeding my pink ponies
- What space station is that castle on again ?
- Has anybody got spare rifle grenades ?
- Wait, we have to act in sync
- Ooops, gotta go, the unicorn is here !
- wait, what ?
- I think a castle just floated by
- floated ? Wait, where are you ?
- It's behind that large asteroid !
- Never mind about the grenades, I found a RPG, let's go !
- Ok, let's pause for a moment, this doesn't make sense
- They have fighters in orbit ! I'm on it !
- I'll cover you with the RPG !
- I'm so going back to Wow...

Re:My first thought

[Fred_A]

If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.

While there have been "mail" games running through mailing lists for a while, MUDs would be a much more pertinent comparison. There have been MUD servers pretty much since someone figured out that you could telnet to any port and stick a server that did silly things on there (or in other words, since the 70s). Everybody who was around in the 70s or 80s had a few MUD accounts, if only to see what all the fuss was about.

It should be trivial to shoot this one down in flames (which assumes the lawyer understands what he's talking about and the judge understands him, fairly optimistic assumptions...).

Re:My first thought

[julesh]

If you read through the patent, it's basically the same as a mailing list that sends out digests. Trivial.

Actually, it's not *basically* the same. It's *exactly* the same. Almost every claim has prior art in standard mailing list management software that has existed practically forever.

I was thinking IRC + Nagle's algorithm as prior art, but I think you've hit the nail on the head there!

Re:Jagex are based in the UK, can they still be su

[TheRaven64]

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.

Re:My first thought

[meerling]

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.

Re:My first thought

[nschubach]

All Software patents are obvious on some level. I still think software shouldn't be patentable, only copyrightable.

I'm a developer, and I still feel as though writing a program is similar to writing a book in that regard. If you allowed publishers to patent ideas for books and methods for main characters to traverse through the story, you'd basically hit the same point we are in software patents. Dragons would be patented to someone, Mystery Novels would be patented to someone else...