OnLive Awarded Patent For Cloud-Based Gaming

donniebaseball23 writes "Cloud gaming provider OnLive has secured a patent for an 'apparatus and method for wireless video gaming.' The patent gives substantial leverage for OnLive over competing brands in the cloud-based gaming market. 'Hundreds of people have worked incredibly hard for more than eight years to bring OnLive technology from the lab to the mass market, not just overcoming technical and business challenges, but overcoming immense skepticism,' said OnLive CEO Steve Perlman. 'It is gratifying to not only see people throughout the world enjoying OnLive technology in the wake of so many doubters, but also receive recognition for such a key invention.'"

Comments

What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[emj]

It just doesn't make sense 'apparatus and method for wireless video gaming.' does not contain "online internet gaming by streaming video"

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[SillyNoob]

The patent claims important for cloud gaming are:

15. An apparatus comprising: a unit operable to execute at least one high twitch-action video game for one or more players, video game video being produced therefrom; a compression unit for compressing the video game video with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms; and a transceiver operable to transmit the compressed video game video to, and to receive commands from, the one or more players, over a network, the one or more players being located a remote distance beyond a premises where the apparatus is located such that transmissions between the transceiver and the one or more players pass through at least one additional transceiver of the network.

21. An apparatus comprising: a unit that includes a processor operable to execute at least one high twitch-action video game, video game video being produced therefrom; a compression unit for compressing the video game video with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms; and a wireless transceiver operable to transmit the compressed video game video, and receive commands from at least one remote player, over a network, the at least one remote player being located a distance beyond a first transmission range of the wireless transceiver, the network comprising a plurality of additional wireless transceivers geographically distributed in a region extending in a transmission chain from a point within the first transmission range of the wireless transceiver to the at least one remote player.

22. An apparatus video game server comprising: a processing unit for executing a high twitch-action video game for one or more players, video game video being produced therefrom; a compression unit operable to compress the video game video with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms; and a transceiver to transmit the compressed video game video to the one or more players of the high twitch-action video game over a network, the one or more players being located a remote distance from the apparatus such that transmissions between the transceiver and the one or more players pass through at least one additional transceiver of the network, the transceiver also being operable to receive commands from the one or more players over the network.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Richard_at_work]

Could it be entirely possible that OnLive have more development threads ongoing than just those you could tightly link to "online internet gaming by streaming video", which is a very high level description of your understanding of what OnLives public product is?

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[udippel]

And how are those cloud-relevant, please? I can only read 'network' and 'multi-player' in there.
And, nope, multiple wireless transceivers are not much of a cloud to me, except we agreed to water down the whole cloud concept to distributed computing.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when 'internet online gaming' has anything to do with 'streaming video'?

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[LingNoi]

Afraid there is prior art for some of this.. remote desktop while playing a game. I know some of us have done it.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Older than that. Haven't you ever played Nethack over telnet?

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Shikaku]

Also MUDs.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Anonymous Coward]

Watched it on a cellphone on 3G! How's that for twisted?

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Anonymous Coward]

God I love the prior art game on slashdot where borderline retarded people randomly list things that have nothing whatsoever to do with the actual patent but may or may not vaguely relate to the sensationalist headline. This one is especially fun because the actual patent claims were listed in the thread and still no one read them.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[bondsbw]

Since when 'internet online gaming' has anything to do with 'streaming video'?

Since OnLive merged the two in one of the most impressive Internet-based services to ever exist.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Afraid there is prior art for some of this.. remote desktop while playing a game. I know some of us have done it.

"FTL has prior art, I got in the truck and went on a highway once."

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Score Whore]

Or xtrek/netrek. In the early days at berkeley they were redirecting the x-displays between buildings. No idea if there was any wireless involved, but then again unless this is something other than wifi + TCP/IP, I'm not sure what relevance there is to the physical network hardware.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[Score Whore]

Not to be overly negative, but the idea is shockingly stupid for many reason. If this succeeds (and to be realistic, this or something like it will become the norm for console gaming in the coming decades) then game prices will move from buy it and play as much as you want to a rental approach. There will be significant impacts on the network due to this as single player games will now be streaming where before they had zero network traffic and multiplayer games go from a few hundred bytes per second to a few hundred kilobytes per second. It just seems bad for the player to be honest.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[nacturation]

And how are those cloud-relevant, please? I can only read 'network' and 'multi-player' in there.

In this case, "cloud" is being used as a marketing term as it doesn't really hold up to NIST's definition of what cloud computing is... though with the five essentially characteristics, you could shoehorn "cloud gaming" into loosely meeting those characteristics.

Re:What does wireless has to do with onlive?

[udippel]

I really wonder, how the heterogeneous clients and the dynamical resource allocation and deallocation are done by the underlying 'cloud' application. At least, not in the claims.

This seems to be a very strange patent

[Chrisq]

It is very general in some ways but contains odd specifics:

comprising: a unit that includes a processor operable to execute at least one high twitch-action video game, video game video being produced therefrom; a compression unit for compressing the video game video with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms;

So the patent wouldn't cover latencies outside this range?

The set-top box of claim 10 wherein the wireless transceiver operates in the 5 GHz band.

Why this band only?

Ignoring these oddities I can't see much that isn't obvious - a box connecting by Wifi to a router connected to the internet for playing games.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[mwvdlee]

My guess is that, without the specifics, it wouldn't be patentable.

Without the specifics, the patent would boil down to being able to play any game with any type of latency over any wireless connection, something that has been done before.

The question here is whether a patent that relies on specifics in order to be different, should be valid at all.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[udippel]

a compression unit for compressing the video game video with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms;

which is the only part in here, I agree, that is not really off the shelf, so to say. I mean, it has probably to make with the latencies between the players.
But what does it make a patent? Where are the technicalities in here??

So the patent wouldn't cover latencies outside this range?

No. But I guess, that about all 'high twitch-action' would fall into that range. And I secretly assume that's what the attorney put on the table as argument: chances are these numbers are not 'anticipated' in the list of cited documents.

Why this band only?

Not 'only'. It is a dependent claim, so the patent is valid in any frequency range, and specifically so in the range of 5 GHz.

The best thing altogether is the list of documents cited against this application: I stopped counting when I reached 100. Actually, having been patent examiner, I never ever before saw such a long list. How can the examiner seriously find the relevant elements comprised of aspects and features from more than 100 documents??
Just look at the claims, there are only 25; and many in principle repeatedly covering the wireless and wired connection. Plus on RAID array.
Maybe the examiner and his assistant try to compete for the 'most ridiculous number of Cited References in any US patent ever'?

Good nite USPTO, you best are leveled and restarted from scratch!

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[Anonymous Coward]

> I can't see much that isn't obvious

Generally obvious after the fact doesn't count. :/

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[emj]

The best thing altogether is the list of documents cited against this application: I stopped counting when I reached 100. Actually, having been patent examiner, I never ever before saw such a long list. How can the examiner seriously find the relevant elements comprised of aspects and features from more than 100 documents?

128 references I suspect they were aiming for a nice and even number.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[Theaetetus]

The best thing altogether is the list of documents cited against this application: I stopped counting when I reached 100. Actually, having been patent examiner, I never ever before saw such a long list. How can the examiner seriously find the relevant elements comprised of aspects and features from more than 100 documents?? Just look at the claims, there are only 25; and many in principle repeatedly covering the wireless and wired connection. Plus on RAID array. Maybe the examiner and his assistant try to compete for the 'most ridiculous number of Cited References in any US patent ever'?

Good nite USPTO, you best are leveled and restarted from scratch!

... says the lazy former Examiner. I'm a patent prosecutor, and most of my pending applications and recently issued patents have well over two hundred references. The inequitable conduct doctrine requires us to cite every reference we or the client knows about that may be material to patentability, and you're required to read and considered them. Don't complain that by us doing our jobs, it makes your job tougher... just do your job.

Plus, the vast majority of the references are US patent publications or foreign patent publications, which means they're all OCR'd and you can search them for relevant terms. So, really, after that, you're only reading a dozen non-patent literature references at most.

Maybe this is why you're a former Examiner.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[drinkypoo]

You're pretty hilarious. Given the number of patents passed through in a day, the examiners are not checking these patents correctly.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[udippel]

We are on Slashdot, so everyone is expected to be a dick. You're welcome.
Maybe in the times of my former career this was considered overdone? Actually, I really never saw those numbers in my times.

And though I am well aware that the applicant has to cite anything that he is aware of as prior art, I only can consider this hilarious. It rather shows a bad (if not lazy) behaviour on the side of applicant/attorney/examiner: To my best understanding, as well as common sense, it is the task not to blindly plug whatever has similar keywords, but intelligently identify the most pertinent documents. Which usually cannot be more than a handful.
No wonder the USPTO grants so much crap these days, when seemingly quantity beats quality hands down.
The independent claims are pretty clear, containing a handful of features. So a good examiner will be able to pinpoint not more than around 3 most pertinent documents, and base the argumentation on those.
If your 'recently issued patents' have more than 200 references, no wonder the quality of the USPTO has gone south as south can be. That's the exact opposite of a sign of a quality examination and grant procedure.

And I am a former on my own resignation. After 6 years the facts were simply too overwhelming: the patent system in these days is anything but helping the individual inventor or the SME. It helps just one section: the multinational conglomerates. Nobody else, neither society nor consumers.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[Theaetetus]

And though I am well aware that the applicant has to cite anything that he is aware of as prior art, I only can consider this hilarious. It rather shows a bad (if not lazy) behaviour on the side of applicant/attorney/examiner: To my best understanding, as well as common sense, it is the task not to blindly plug whatever has similar keywords, but intelligently identify the most pertinent documents. Which usually cannot be more than a handful.

Ah, then your understanding is incorrect. The rules do not say "most pertinent", but rather "material to patentability". If it were just "most pertinent", you'd only see a handful. Complain to Congress and the Director, not us.

The rest of your post is based on your misunderstanding of 37 CFR 1.56 and is therefore moot.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[udippel]

"[...]the Office is aware of and evaluates the teachings of all information material to patentability. Each individual associated with the filing and prosecution of a patent application has a duty of candor and good faith in dealing with the Office, which includes a duty to disclose to the Office all information known to that individual to be material to patentability as defined in this section."

This is the general blurb. Now we get more specific ['as defined in this section']:
"The Office encourages applicants to carefully examine:
[...]
(2) The closest information over which individuals associated with the filing or prosecution of a patent application believe any pending claim patentably defines[...]"

'closest' is a rather unambiguous term. It is not dumping the content of the patent office's database, or at least of all documents in the same patent class, unfiltered to the office. And so should the office do, if not lazy: evaluate

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[Theaetetus]

... so the phrase "material to patentability" is defined in the rule, and yet rather than quoting that, you go for a completely different section and attempt to define "closest", which isn't a requirement of the rule, but rather a mere encouragement.

Go back and read the rule. It doesn't say "Each individual associated with the filing and prosecution of a patent application has a duty of candor and good faith in dealing with the Office, which includes a duty to disclose to the Office the closest information known to that individual to be material to patentability as defined in this section." It says "all information." Your remarks about closest are irrelevant, because they appear in the "applicants are encouraged" line, not the line describing the applicants' required duty, which is to disclose all information material to patentability.

So, the important part is this... What does it mean to be "material to patentability". Fortunately, the rule gives us a definition:

(b) Under this section, information is material to patentability when it is not cumulative to information already of record or being made of record in the application, and (1) It establishes, by itself or in combination with other information, a prima facie case of unpatentability of a claim; or (2) It refutes, or is inconsistent with, a position the applicant takes in: (i) Opposing an argument of unpatentability relied on by the Office, or (ii) Asserting an argument of patentability.

In particular, section 1 says that an item of prior art may be material to patentability, if in combination with other information, it establishes a prima facie case of unpatentability.

You were allegedly an Examiner. You've supposedly done 103 rejections. If a claim says, "A power supply comprising [inventive new element] and a capacitor," you can throw in any prior art with a capacitor as an element for a 103 rejection. So therefore, we are required to cite said capacitor because, in combination with something else, it may establish a prima facie case of obviousness. If we do not, we have not fulfilled our duty to disclose all information material to patentability, and thus have possibly committed inequitable conduct.

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[udippel]

Your term 'allegedly' is a nice word. Thanks.

That's the downside of all the IT, I guess, in these days. It is so easy to drag&drop a bunch of references forth and back. A bunch that is just classified in the same patent class, and/or contains a specific set of keywords. In my early days, those reports had to be done manually, in handwriting. I can guarantee you that we did read carefully, rather than blindly insert. And so did the applicants.
We read the claims, all of them, carefully, and extracted all the features in the claims, independent and dependent. And then we were looking for prior art for these features, and not just for the features as such, but in a suitable combination within the field of the application. So I would not cite any capacitor, except if in connection with a power supply. Except, of course, there had never been any capacitor mentioned with a power supply, then I had to cite a capacitor as such.
This way, I would find all power supplies with a capacitor and the inventive step. Then the application can be rejected. If the inventive step is not found in all the documents of 'power supply and capacitor' it is granted. In a nutshell.
So, studying the underlying claims of the patent under discussion here, there are less than 10 features. The independent claims all cover some game controller for moving game elements, to be played over some network, with distributed resources. There are surely documents that contain all of this in a single document. What other features? WiFi, 5 GHz, RAID, 801.11. That's another few. Then, the crucial one, about the compression and the 5-80 milliseconds. Is this found somewhere in the most pertinent ones? Otherwise it needs another reference.

Yes, I am too lazy to read the communication between examiner and applicant in this case, but I bet that the discussion was - as it always is - about the most pertinent documents, less than a handful.
Though I am sure, in these days, examiners also have ready-made paragraphs where they only have to enter a document number, and can assemble their communication within minutes from a library of text passages.
No regrets to be out of that type of business!

Re:This seems to be a very strange patent

[Lunix Nutcase]

Given the number of patents passed through in a day

And that number would be?

given the history of awarding...

[pahles]

the most horrendous patents by the USPTO, you can't seriously say it is gratifying to receive recognition...

Re:given the history of awarding...

[Dachannien]

Actually, the real error here is that patents aren't issued based on how much awesomesauce your invention is. It's mainly based on whether the examiner can find prior art against your claims and whether you successfully jump through a set of legal hoops successfully. A patent is not an endorsement of an invention.

Meh

[nicholas22]

They can get all the patents they like, I think it's not worth the hype it's getting. Congrats to the teams and all, I'm sure there were a lot of technologically challenging problems that had to be solved (e.g. compression) but in essence it was always going to be laggy gameplay on the cheap.

Re:Meh

[udippel]

Congrats to the teams and all, I'm sure there were a lot of technologically challenging problems that had to be solved (e.g. compression) .

I wouldn't know yet, why one should congratulate them in any way. If they solved complex problems, please, by all means, file patent applications that specify the problems and the solutions employed.
But this is more like BMW filing for a car, engine, 4 wheels, steering, with a length not shorter than 387 cam and not longer than 422 cm. No congratulations due for this patent, sorry.

Progress!

[igreaterthanu]

I welcome any and all patents on bad ideas. It means that only this company can now use said bad ideas.

This cloud gaming thing has all the bad things about DRM, plus additional lag. I want games to run on my machine where I control them. I want games to work when I am in the bus, and mobile internet is far too slow for gaming.

Re:Progress!

[LingNoi]

problem is that they'll go out of business, some patent troll with purchase the patent then sue everyone regardless of if the patent is valid.

Re:Progress!

[igreaterthanu]

Said patent troll can only sue people who use ideas expressed in the patent.

Normal games don't infringe on this.

Re:Progress!

[whoop]

I want games to run on my machine where I control them.

Where in the existence of OnLive does it prevent you from doing this? OnLive is just another means of delivering games to people. If you don't wish to partake, go right ahead. There's a good portion of the population that doesn't know how to upgrade a video card or whatever, aside from buying a new computer. OnLive games work on the vast number of these less than top-of-the-line computers.

More gamers is good for the industry, and good for everybody that enjoys games.

Re:Progress!

[igreaterthanu]

The fact is that this is the ultimate form of DRM, never giving the code to the user.

Once they realize that this will prevent piracy, this could very well become an exclusive method of distributing games, then customers who actually pay for games, like me, will either have to go with it or miss out.

Re:Progress!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

Said patent troll can only sue people who use ideas expressed in the patent.

Ahahahahahahahaha... *wipes tear* man, that was a good one.

Re:Progress!

[19thNervousBreakdown]

If part of the game is 80ms of display lag, I don't really think of it as missing out, I think of it as an efficient way to decide where I can save my money. The 35ms of lag I get from my monitors (research before you buy, kids) is enough to make even the slightest additional lag from the computer extremely annoying, and an FPS basically unplayable.

Re:Progress!

[SanityInAnarchy]

I agree! Plus the latency...

X forwarding

[KiloByte]

Oh so many years ago, I played Quake 1 over remote X on four IRIX boxes connecting to a single beefy Linux server. It required a pretty small window to be playable, but beside that, it worked surprisingly well. The server was two network hops away, in the same building, next to some big-ass clusters.

Except for using a wired network rather than wifi -- which is immaterial to the issue at hand -- tell me, how exactly did that differ from this cherished patent?

Re:X forwarding

[SillyNoob]

Exact same question I've got. This patent seems to broad. Claim 15 pretty much describes a PC using X forwarding, remote desktop or whatever...

15. An apparatus comprising: a unit operable to execute at least one high twitch-action video game for one or more players, video game video being produced therefrom; a compression unit for compressing the video game video with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms; and a transceiver operable to transmit the compressed video game video to, and to receive commands from, the one or more players, over a network, the one or more players being located a remote distance beyond a premises where the apparatus is located such that transmissions between the transceiver and the one or more players pass through at least one additional transceiver of the network.

Re:X forwarding

[udippel]

Except for using a wired network rather than wifi -- which is immaterial to the issue at hand -- tell me, how exactly did that differ from this cherished patent?

I am pretty sure your question is purely rhetorical.
Though, I could question if you really had a compression unit in your game that had a latency between 5 and 80 milliseconds? Chances are you didn't. How the inclusion of that compression unit actually makes an invention is beyond me, however.

Re:X forwarding

[pdbaby]

I don't think this should be patentable but in my mind the implementation of OnLive is doing something a lot more complicated than X forwarding (the idea, of course, is the same).
It's working over a contended public network with a large number of hops with varying latencies, doing low latency compression on HD resolutions at reasonably low bandwidth.

As I understand it, wifi adds more unreliability (packet loss and latency) to the network path as far as they're concerned

Re:X forwarding

[udippel]

in my mind the implementation of OnLive is doing something a lot more complicated than X forwarding (the idea, of course, is the same).

It's working over a contended public network with a large number of hops with varying latencies, doing low latency compression on HD resolutions at reasonably low bandwidth.

As I understand it, wifi adds more unreliability (packet loss and latency) to the network path

Yes, and? Though I am not totally against patents, but then these complicated methods ought to be filed, not the resulting off-the-shelf product.

Re:X forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for using a wired network rather than wifi -- which is immaterial to the issue at hand -- tell me, how exactly did that differ from this cherished patent?

This patent is specifically limited to only the 5ghz band.

Cloud computing/gaming over 2.4ghz wifi is not covered, nor over any other network type.

Also it appears to limit itself to only remotely connecting to a 'video game console'
As a Linux box is a general purpose computer and not a video game console only, it wouldn't be covered by the patent.

I'm not sure why, but the patent is also limited to only game consoles that use IR controllers.
So if your cloud game uses wired or 2.4ghz (bluetooth/wifi/custom) joypads, this patent doesn't apply to you.

Basically you would almost have to go out of your way to build a cloud game system that meets the patent requirements to infringe. Stick with 802.11n and you are safe, and avoid IR controllers (which you should avoid anyway, as that would suck to use.. CD-I anyone?)
The patent also would never apply to any computer game. It would have to be a dedicated console.

Re:X forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

Grandpa! Grandpa! Tell us again about the time you played Quake 1 over remote X on four IRIX boxes connecting to a single beefy Linux server!

Re:X forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

You read the patent wrong. Claim 2, 6, and 12 claim a narrower-scope device that operates in the 5ghz band, but the broader claims in 1, 4, and 10 are not so limited. In fact, if you read down in their description, they specifically describe one embodiment of their invention operating in the 2.46ghz band. Ditto for the IR claims; they are just narrower embodiments of the claimed device.

In order for a device to infringe a patent, it only has to read on to _a_ claim in the patent, although it must match every aspect of that claim.

Re:X forwarding

[RMH101]

Q: Has anyone actually *used* this. I'm as skeptical as the next guy, but it does seem they have a product that kind of works. They're even advertising ability to "play" Windows 7 on Android Tablets etc as well. Anyone got real world experience?

Re:X forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

This is exactly the point. One of the points of patents is to encourage inventors to publish their methods rather than keeping them as trade secrets. If the information in the patent isn't sufficiently detailed to create an implementation then it should not be allowed.

Re:X forwarding

[Anonymous Coward]

Except for using a wired network rather than wifi -- which is immaterial to the issue at hand -- tell me, how exactly did that differ from this cherished patent?

I am pretty sure your question is purely rhetorical.
Though, I could question if you really had a compression unit in your game that had a latency between 5 and 80 milliseconds? Chances are you didn't. How the inclusion of that compression unit actually makes an invention is beyond me, however.

Would doing all that, plus using a Quake proxy count as a compression "unit"? I used to play a lot of Quake1 online from the U of MN, but I played even more from home on my 28.8 once QuakeWorld and Qizmo proxy were out. If I remember correctly, Qizmo compressed the packets between the server and client.

Re:X forwarding

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Oh so many years ago, I played Quake 1 over remote X on four IRIX boxes connecting to a single beefy Linux server. It required a pretty small window to be playable, but beside that, it worked surprisingly well. The server was two network hops away, in the same building, next to some big-ass clusters.

Except for using a wired network rather than wifi -- which is immaterial to the issue at hand -- tell me, how exactly did that differ from this cherished patent?

You mean besides the greater distance, the bigger window, and that they're obviously doing a video encoding to make it possible in a way you wish you had when doing remote desktop?

Re:X forwarding

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Q: Has anyone actually *used* this. I'm as skeptical as the next guy, but it does seem they have a product that kind of works.

Yes. There was a little (but not unbearable) latency but otherwise you wouldn't know that you weren't hooked directly up to a machine playing the game.

I wish VNC worked like this (including audio) and it was cool to not have to 'install' any games. You weren't just limited to PC games, either, the games I played were on XBOX.

Re:X forwarding

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

... with audio?

Re:X forwarding

[pdbaby]

I agree completely, I was just making the point that it is a bit more complicated than X forwarding. As I said, I don't think this should be patentable -- specifically, I think it doesn't go into enough detail on the methods used to ameliorate latency and bandwidth issues.

Re:X forwarding

[udippel]

Thank you. What a nice difference, since usually people are on Slashdot to disagree ... ;)

This is exactly one of the total weaknesses of the patent system in the last decade(s). I can guarantee you, that the 'good old days' at least in this respect were actually good. I know what I am talking about, I used to be patent examiner. People tend to overlook that before 1982, the USPTO outright refused to grant any software patents. The old Dutch system did not allow amendments, the patent was granted or rejected 'as is'.

Forgive for a somewhat lengthy post here, but this patent is a very bad one with respect to what we agreed upon. As I wrote somewhere else, probably it was rejected in the first round for total obviousness, and then these famous 5 to 80 ms came in. This is a trick often used by applicants, to still make it work: add some item that is not anticipated in the literature, and the examiner, according to case law, needs to grant.
This actually is outrageous, because it is not any technical , nor inventive detail. It rather is a result. So it is not a disclosure in its genuine sense.
This is one of the reasons why the system is broken: a one-size-fits-all description, spiced up with some exotic thingy, and you get your patent.

let me close with an awkward example of my own experience. There was an application, where 'applicant' found that in an electrical two-pole of resistor in series with capacitor (RC), "applicant's research" had found a better image reproduction quality, and better colours on a CRT, if one changes the sequence from RC to CR. That is, the "processing sequence" in this two-pole with the signal hitting the capacitor first, would be "advantageous". We, electrical engineers, fought tooth and nail to reject it; in vain. Patent law does not accept standard text books that show the opposite of what is claimed. The only reference that can be cited against this hilarious application would be, if some fantasist had filed the same thing earlier.

Oh, sorry, another fact: The International Patent Classification has a specific class for patent granted for perpetuum mobile. No kidding. Though unfortunately I don't remember it, and am too lazy to look it up.

Overcome?

[crossmr]

What have the overcome? they've failed almost as hard as most people predicted. They've changed their prices/subscription model so many times it is obvious they are desperately trying to secure customers. Other than astroturfed reviews there doesn't seem to be a lot of significantly good press on it. Random user reviews all note lag, quality, etc as being bad. This still doesn't seem like it would serve as useful for much beyond turn based games. Games which usually don't have massive graphical requirements so they can run on cheap machines anyway.

I still have no idea what the real market is for this and who it is that will actually benefit from this service. Other than blind people who aren't good at math. If they could just tap that market..

Re:Overcome?

[bondsbw]

I'm sorry, but you're being too harsh on a service that has 1) succeeded more than failed, 2) is still here and thriving, and 3) is the first attempt in a completely new market.

And if I were to guess, you're basing your view of OnLive's success on how its subscriber base compares with the XBox 360, PS3, and Wii subscriber bases. But when you do so, you neglect that these are different markets, and that each of these are built off of the success of their predecessors. And it's easy to ignore the chicken-and-egg problem... since many of these games are multiplayer, other players are important. Halo or CoD multiplayer wouldn't be nearly as successful if the number of players across the globe playing at a time were numbered in the hundreds, instead of the hundreds-of-thousands. But OnLive had to start somewhere, and it's grown ever since.

OnLive is definitely going uphill, but that's not a sign of failure... if anything, they've shown great success.

Re:Overcome?

[crossmr]

I'm basing their success on how schizophrenic they are with their pricing model, I have no idea what their subscriber base is. I'm also basing it on reports of performance beyond those people who are reviewing it from the room next door or who are sitting on mega connections well beyond your average consumer.

I've seen no evidence of success. They haven't gone bankrupt yet, but if that's success well it's a pretty bar to set.

the only people I've seen who even give this the time of day are reviewers who admit to reviewing it on high speed business connections set up to provide a level of service well beyond the average home user and even they admit that it still has issues.

Reading the average home user's report indicates those problems grow. Some games are blurry messes.

At one point the financial investment was gone through on this, but since they've changed their pricing model a dozen times it's hard to know exactly where it lies. Before it didn't really make much sense to invest in onlive.

Re:Overcome?

[SharpFang]

IF they provided a subscription model with unlimited access to enormous games library, at cost comparable to a MMORPG subscription, it would be quite attractive. Sure twitch-based games would be worse than on your "localhost" but still playable, and you wouldn't need a beefy PC to run newest games in high quality. If it could be integrated into some cable TV packages, it would be quite nice for semi-casual gamers who are not willing to shell out $2000 for a newest gfx cards but don't mind $30/mo to play anything they like.

Re:Overcome?

[h4rr4r]

$2000? You can get graphics cards that handle any current game for a tenth of that.

Re:Overcome?

[SharpFang]

At top settings? Nope.

There are quite a few games out there that have top settings in a range no hardware on earth is capable to support.
Sure for $200 you can get sustained 30FPS at medium settings in about all games available now and in a year at best. If you want hardware able to run newest games in 2-3 years in acceptable quality, you have to dish out much more than that.

Still, at cost of increased latency, OnLive promised to top the video quality of all the "affordable" PC hardware and current-generation consoles and provide a very "high end" rendering quality instead, and to sustain the "best available" trend, their hardware following requirements of the new game releases.

Did it deliver on that promise? Honestly, I don't know.

Re:Overcome?

[crossmr]

At top settings? yes.
Gigabyte 1GB geforce 460 GTX hasn't had any issues and is $184 on newegg.
The days of trying to blame the $1000 graphics card bogeyman are long gone.

and if you want to compare apples to apples, you aren't getting top graphics on online. As people have repeatedly reported, the graphics are not good. Especially on any kind of action game. They certainly aren't top of the line.

Square Enix has prior art.

[lxs]

Cloud based gaming was integral to Final Fantasy 7.

Long time ago

[meerling]

Ok, the 90s were a long time ago for software. I knew a guy who was such an addict for Ultima Online he played it at work until they started blocking it. His solution, PC-Anywhere to his home computer (which wasn't blocked) and run Ultima Online on his home computer.

Basically it wasn't a lot different from the ancient dumb terminals (or thin clients) remotely connecting to big iron to run your apps. So what if the app is a game or a word processor or even a molecular modeling program, it's all the same process, the only real difference is how much bandwidth you need going both ways for it to work without issues. (Though I can see some software patents on the compression systems, but that's all.)

Their limiting their patent by including some very specific junk doesn't make this any more new or innovative. But I don't read modern patent legalese worth a darn, so who knows what I missed or didn't understand before my eyes glazed over. : )

Hmmm.... I wonder if the patent examiners have glazed over eyes...

Re:Long time ago

[emj]

who knows what I missed or didn't understand before my eyes glazed over. : )

Yeah that text was pretty dense and meaningless, so there probably something very important hidden in there.. :-)

What the EFF?

[Anonymous Coward]

This looks ripe for EFF's patent busting, at least in part if not for the entire patent. I can definitely see this particular patent getting narrowed, in any case.

What can you play on this?

[kanto]

I've played my fair share of fps games and what I've never seen is a good game where the players controls appear to happen with 5 to 80ms lag (+whatever lag there is inherently in the game itself). Even counter-strike, though having a walking style of a drunken camel, starts doing stuff immediately when you move or use the mouse to turn. Rts, mmorpg etc. maybe, but still you're going to have diminished experience unless you hide the mouse cursor and use voice commands or whatnot.

Re:What can you play on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It works surprisingly well for games like Just Cause 2 which do not require too much precision - even when tethering via smartphone and HSDPA (thus resulting in >100ms lag)
UT3 on the other hand really requires wifi or wired connection but works -except for some rare lags- quite well but is not comparable to the speed of a local game.
On the other hand it's always funny to have everyone look at you when you play UT3 on a low-end netbook ;)

Re:What can you play on this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've played my fair share of fps games and what I've never seen is a good game where the players controls appear to happen with 5 to 80ms lag (+whatever lag there is inherently in the game itself). Even counter-strike, though having a walking style of a drunken camel, starts doing stuff immediately when you move or use the mouse to turn. Rts, mmorpg etc. maybe, but still you're going to have diminished experience unless you hide the mouse cursor and use voice commands or whatnot.

You're obviously not old enough to remember "net Quake". This was Quake online before QuakeWorld (client-side predictions) was developed. You see, back before broadband, when the fastest modems were 28.8s or 33.6s we all had average pings between 150-250ms. Even to servers hosted at our dial-up ISPs. It was COMPLETELY playable. In fact, YOU were the client-side predictor. The input lag created what we called the "ice skating" effect. If your predictions were off you'd "slide" passed your intended destination.

I remember these days clearly (I'm only 34), and I had so much fun playing net Quake that I can't see how OnLive will fail. Especially when their sweet spot is under 80ms; which most broadband connections can achieve.

Re:What can you play on this?

[TopSpin]

I found OnLive tolerable for non-FPS games; good enough that you won't care it isn't local. For FPS, OnLive has UT3 in its 'marketplace'. When playing there is 'lag'; the time between your input and the display update is noticeable. On the other hand, the other players are all on the same OnLive LAN, apparently, so there is very little lag between players. The net result amounts to a different kind of lag and, unfortunately, it is unpleasant for FPS play.

OnLive makes trying things out very easy. You can 'trial' almost every game they have and switch among them in seconds. The client is small, unobtrusive and robust. The user interface is interesting; aside from the marketplace and actual game play they provide a screen where live thumbnails of many games are multiplexed together. You can pan around and 'spectate' any of these games. I've actually spent more time in there then actually playing anything.

Re:What can you play on this?

[h4rr4r]

Sure that was fun when everyone had the same challenge. But when my ping is 80ms and you have 80ms to the server we are playing on + 80ms from onlive I am going to own you at CS or any other twitch game.

Re:What can you play on this?

[kanto]

Didn't know the games are run as lan-games; it does alleviate the overall lag, but as you noted the input to action delay is annoying. Being restricted to OnLive's servers also means you're cut off from the rest of the "community" so to speak. Half the fun of CS for me was playing clan matches with your friends and the rest of it was playing on a (entry restricted) public server where you'd meet people you knew casually (enemies/top rated players etc.).

Sounds to me like a patent troll

[WCMI92]

And the patent office has STILL not stopped granting patents for X that has been done for years and years if you add "on the internet" to it. Also, online gaming dates back over a decade now, how can that not be prior art?

Until that key word arrives...

[h2okies]

'It is gratifying to not only see MILLIONS OF people throughout the world enjoying OnLive technology in the wake of so many doubters, but also receive recognition for such a key invention.'" until that bold word makes in that statement this is fail in a can

Devil is in the detail

[giantism_strikes]

I'm guessing that they are using the random bits about literal latency ranges and what band is used to give them an idea that could get a patent. Since companies could not get a patent on the representation of the human body, the original GI Joe had the right thumbnail on the underside of the thumb. Put random information into a patent, get patent, sue anyone that uses any bit of information in your patent, and hope for the best.

Thank god

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god for this patent. The last thing we want is more people copying Onlive. Also, www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/11/22

Seen this before

[RenHoek]

MUD + Telnet.. Hey, those were high-end graphics at the time.. also ncurses works like a compression program.. (Or BBS doorgames if anybody wants to go back further)

I'm all for more ways for me to get my game on, but I'm so very against patents (software in particular).

Failure is Perlman's Business Model

[killdashnine]

Looking back at Perlman's other ventures, it seems that he hypes a technology in an area and then ultimately makes money elsewhere. WebTV, for example ... that ended up getting picked up by other companies and was in one form turned into Moxi via Charter. Once this fails, it'll probably be picked up for a dime by some other company. No gamer is going to care if they have a patent ... and honestly does anyone? Read the forums and responses throughout the Internet and you'll find that gamers really have no use for OnLive. It is a novelty ... a "gee whiz, I can play Crysis on a crappy laptop" kind of thing. In the United States we already have huge issues with broadband and the recent wins by various companies to throttle traffic is already hurting them. Why "stream" video of a game being played (by you, and elsewhere) when you offload all that onto your own machine? They missed many targets and dropped prices already means that they're not reaching the market. "Cloud Gaming" is complete BS.

Great!

[Technomancer]

I think cloud gaming sucks so if there will be only one company doing it for next 17 years, it's for the better.

Wireless-based, not Cloud-based!

[Bazouel]

For a second, I was perplexed. It's all about a wireless gaming station. Why is the article even mentioning the Cloud ??

I hope it has an expensive license

[Anonymous Coward]

The more expensive, the better. The more likely it will be that this stupid gimmick won't catch on. We've had to put up with this motion sensing shit since 2007, and it's unfortunately now spread to all 3 consoles (hence why PC is still the best platform). We don't need more useless gimmicks. Good on OnLive.

Prior Art

[obscuro]

One has to assume that the patent examiner in this case doesn't know what a multi-player game is. Isn't there some way to force a patent examiner to recuse him or herself from applications about which they know NOTHING? Jesus! Hey Gramps, remember at Thanksgiving when your great grandson was clicking the new-fangled thing with the button next to the plastic box with the antenna and flashing lights?!

And as far as the compression claim... WTF??!! Is there a specific algorithm to go with that, maybe, please? ANYTHING? Hi we're compressing network traffic to reduce latency on something highly interactive; can we have a patent?... Sure sonny, let me go get my teeth and change my diaper and I'll be right back with my rubber stamp. You sure are clever and you're glad you got me as your examiner. All these other slackers spend all day playing games on their phones and laptops and such.

Hello, tech support? Can you send a plumber to connect the tube up to the back of my computer so I can get the Internet? Ooops, I farted and a part of my body fell off. Wait a minute.... Okay, hmmm, this next patent app is for a means of exchanging oxygen and carbon dioxide by drawing air in and out of your lungs.... Hey, didn't someone do that before?

Got it, and Love it

[Anonymous Coward]

I signed up right when they came out - it's an awesome idea, and they make it work - few issues, but nothing real bad. PC gamer here btw. They even shipped me a free console because I signed up real early... they need some more games - think they have about 26 now or so... I am stuck on starcraft2 right now so have not been playing anything onlive in a while :)