Worlds.com lawsuit settled
By
AmazingMOO,
Posted on: 2010-04-27 09:39 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Quote:
Worlds definitely demonstrated the technology back in the late nineties. I don't have the exact date, but I do know I was on their technology sometime before 2000. They had a large virtual world setup running /very/ early in the game.|
Originally Posted by Chase_Arcanum
Somewhere here, our data is really at odds. According to sources published back at 1996, worlds.com demonstrated tech in the market way back then. Granted, it may not have executed the entire system that they show here-- which would be a fatal flaw. if that was the case, though, the patent wouldnt' have been granted at all.
--------------------- Also, Although the abstract sounds generic, all patents do- you have to cover the general idea in a very limited space. The importance is in the details. I can patent a "device that delivers caffeine directly to users through the Internet" and then list how I do it. You can patent your own "device that delivers caffeine directly to users through the Internet" and as long as we achieve that same goal in entirely different ways, we're both OK. In this case, "habitat" wasn't considered prior art (correctly or incorrectly) because this dealt more with the specific challenges of scalability and scope. Habitat has used techniques to work around these barriers, rather than overcome them. Air Warrior and Club Calibre were the same way (and were prior art that was used by the USPTO in its consideration). Again, both of these products managed to make a multiplayer game that worked around specific barriers, rather than overcome them. This patent design *claimed to* use an innovation that worked past those barriers. As long as they made a valuable and not-obvious contribution to a public-domain invention (habitat's data), they can then patent that contribution. This has been common over a century- heck since the paperclip was patented, there have been almost a dozed patents that build upon the expired patent with new techniques (ones that don't dent/mark paper as much, ones for larger bundles, ones with clip binds, etc). Those are all legitimate patents that build off the prior art idea. People can keep using the public-domain idea, but if you want to use their innovation, they can charge you for it. The claim that worlds.com made was that they DID come up with an architecture that eliminated those barriers (true or not). That's what's critical here. Worlds.com has not made the claim that every virtual world out there owes them money. They've instead targeted places that use techniques that parallel the ones that they claim they developed and that the USPTO gave them a limited-time ownership to. - it did not include peer to peer - it did not include ad hoc systems - it did not include 2d graphic systems - it included 3d client-server systems - - if those systems used a technique to identify the max avatars & objects to display - - if this determination was made on identified client and network resources - - if that display limitation is executed on the client-side. That's what their system governs... well, the first item's hilights. If you made a client-server based network game that didn't limit the max avatars & items to display- if it was to render everything, even if it made the client's system hang due to the load... then you DID NOT INFRINGE ON (this part) OF THE PATENT. This wasn't a claim to all 3D MMO's. This was a claim to a method to overcome the challenge of having TOO MANY people in the same place at the same time in a 3D MMO. |
The part about limiting avatars was key, they were packing a lot of avatars into their world. I believe the first incarnation was called AlphaWorld.
I don't believe software patents have any merit. Software should not be patentable.
Here is what Worlds.com "patented":
http://www.google.com/patents?id=wv5...page&q&f=false
Do you see that? they basically tried to patent, not just a specific technology or technique, but a generic concept. Read it very closely, this also claims patent over FPS games. This is exactly like the man in australia patenting the wheel.
Furthermore, worlds.com did NOT DEVELOP ANY PROOF OF CONCEPT until late 2005 which is why the patent took that long to be granted. I want to stress that and make it clear to you. Your prior post talks about all of these things they supposedly did but it's factually not true.
And I reiterate Lucasfilm had already patented this for Habitat/Club Caribe and released it into the public domain likely before this patent troll company president was old enough to be out of diapers. The patent office is incredibly lax and does not understand, and there are plenty of cases, like this one, of the patent office reissuing something they already issued a patent on.
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Also, Although the abstract sounds generic, all patents do- you have to cover the general idea in a very limited space. The importance is in the details. I can patent a "device that delivers caffeine directly to users through the Internet" and then list how I do it. You can patent your own "device that delivers caffeine directly to users through the Internet" and as long as we achieve that same goal in entirely different ways, we're both OK.
In this case, "habitat" wasn't considered prior art (correctly or incorrectly) because this dealt more with the specific challenges of scalability and scope. Habitat has used techniques to work around these barriers, rather than overcome them. Air Warrior and Club Calibre were the same way (and were prior art that was used by the USPTO in its consideration). Again, both of these products managed to make a multiplayer game that worked around specific barriers, rather than overcome them. This patent design *claimed to* use an innovation that worked past those barriers.
As long as they made a valuable and not-obvious contribution to a public-domain invention (habitat's data), they can then patent that contribution. This has been common over a century- heck since the paperclip was patented, there have been almost a dozed patents that build upon the expired patent with new techniques (ones that don't dent/mark paper as much, ones for larger bundles, ones with clip binds, etc). Those are all legitimate patents that build off the prior art idea. People can keep using the public-domain idea, but if you want to use their innovation, they can charge you for it.
The claim that worlds.com made was that they DID come up with an architecture that eliminated those barriers (true or not). That's what's critical here. Worlds.com has not made the claim that every virtual world out there owes them money. They've instead targeted places that use techniques that parallel the ones that they claim they developed and that the USPTO gave them a limited-time ownership to.
- it did not include peer to peer
- it did not include ad hoc systems
- it did not include 2d graphic systems
- it included 3d client-server systems
- - if those systems used a technique to identify the max avatars & objects to display
- - if this determination was made on identified client and network resources
- - if that display limitation is executed on the client-side.
That's what their system governs... well, the first item's hilights.
If you made a client-server based network game that didn't limit the max avatars & items to display- if it was to render everything, even if it made the client's system hang due to the load... then you DID NOT INFRINGE ON (this part) OF THE PATENT.
This wasn't a claim to all 3D MMO's. This was a claim to a method to overcome the challenge of having TOO MANY people in the same place at the same time in a 3D MMO.
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Personally, this is why I hate software patents. Every programmer /designer working on something new is going to face a different challenge and make a different solution every day. Some of these will be rather remarkable innovations and take quite a bit of work to get done, but they're really the same innovation that someone else will independently think up somewhere else tomorrow or next week. Do we really want something like Alexander Graham Bell's "race to the patent office" for all of these? Do we really want a decent idea tied up for 20 years because people are asking too much for their share?