I notice these guys are in part basing their patent on patent US5659691 "Virtual reality network with selective distribution and updating of data to reduce bandwidth requirements" which really pisses me off because *that* patent refers to an article I wrote in 1992(!!) for my Cyberterm project that talks about these very things.
I obtained some lengthy legal advice from a patent attorney regarding this earlier patent and, like this new one, these guys don't have a leg to stand on. Basically, to infringe their patent you'd have to build a system that copies every one of the features they mention. Miss just one or two (like Cyberterm does, because they're stupid ideas) and there's no problem. Also, as many people here have mentioned, there're many cases of "prior art" for this genre.
The ironic thing is that a patent is allowed to be based on public knowledge and other patents, just as long as it is a unique and new combination of those other techniques.
Slashdot Mirror
I notice these guys are in part basing their patent on patent US5659691 "Virtual reality network with selective distribution and updating of data to reduce bandwidth requirements" which really pisses me off because *that* patent refers to an article I wrote in 1992(!!) for my Cyberterm project that talks about these very things.
I obtained some lengthy legal advice from a patent attorney regarding this earlier patent and, like this new one, these guys don't have a leg to stand on. Basically, to infringe their patent you'd have to build a system that copies every one of the features they mention. Miss just one or two (like Cyberterm does, because they're stupid ideas) and there's no problem. Also, as many people here have mentioned, there're many cases of "prior art" for this genre.
The ironic thing is that a patent is allowed to be based on public knowledge and other patents, just as long as it is a unique and new combination of those other techniques.
Yeah, it pisses me off a lot...