Of course this patent had prior art, there were lots of places that did some of this work before Worlds.com.
Worlds Chat was innovative in that we did this on standard-issue PC's, over standard dial-up lines, over the internet, which for the time - 95, was totally innovative. There were a number of very other cool things in the product that might or might not have been done before, like some of the culling we did to improve performance.
But..... although I'm listed as an author, I informed Worlds on the one occasion before yesterday that I saw the patent (for a total of 15 mins) that I believed there were claims in there that were not invented by us. I was also informed by one of the other authors that they signed because they believed the other claims had been invented by me.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course this patent had prior art, there were lots of places that did some of this work before Worlds.com. Worlds Chat was innovative in that we did this on standard-issue PC's, over standard dial-up lines, over the internet, which for the time - 95, was totally innovative. There were a number of very other cool things in the product that might or might not have been done before, like some of the culling we did to improve performance. But ..... although I'm listed as an author, I informed Worlds on the one occasion before yesterday that I saw the patent (for a total of 15 mins) that I believed there were claims in there that were not invented by us. I was also informed by one of the other authors that they signed because they believed the other claims had been invented by me.