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Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games? Kinda.
Posted by
Hemos
on Wed Apr 25, 2001 02:33 PM
from the gonna-get-squashed dept.
from the gonna-get-squashed dept.
Eddie Edwards writes "This story over at Gamasutra details how Worlds.com have been awarded US patent 6,219,045 for - well, for more-or-less exactly the client-server architecture used in Quake. As the article says, "the company believes the patent may apply to currently in-use multi-user games" (!) and Worlds.com "will also review other 3D sites who may be using [their] technology to ensure [they] are fully compensated". " Of course, Worlds.com will prolly get squashed on the prior art issue - but wow. From what I can see, IANAL, it's not so much Quake-like games, but more like 3D chat-game-type environment.
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Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games
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Re:Is it just me... (Score:3)
Yes. In more detail, when someone tried to patent the waterbed, Stranger in a Strage Land was cited, invalidating the patent.
- Sam
A proposed solution to frivolous patents (Score:3)
The space of ideas (esp. in the field of software patents where usually every hacker thinking longer about a problem will come up with a simmilar solution) is clearly a public ressource to all mankind, so I don't see why patent holders shouldn't pay for their temporary monopoly to exploit parts of it, esp. as the common practice of look-away or defense-only patents doesn't serve the original intent of making new technology faster available.
What about the following scheme: everybody who files for a (justified) patent has to fix a buyout price for it (i.e. should a group of people or companies pay the patent holder this price, then the patent immediately becomes void and the technology is from then on free for everybody to use). The holder of the patent is then required to pay an annual percentual tax (something about 1 to 5 %, maybe also increasing with time) of this price for as long as he wishes to uphold the patent (up to it's maximum duration). The buyout price can be annually adopted within a certain range (say +/- 20%) by the holder to react to new technological developements.
A annual patent fee would make it expensive to hold on to patents which don't generate revenue (and therefor don't help promote technology), be it either because they are bogus to begin with (no one will pay amazon a dime for their one-click patent since it is probably not valid in the first place), or simply useless or obsolete.
This also has the additional benefit of keeping the number of patents low (which is always a good thing, as it means more freedom for everyone and less restrictions on innovation, or - in one word - less lawyers) while not cutting too much into the legetimate revenue of the holders.
It also makes the patent market more transparent and reduces the risk of abiguities or unintentional violations as patents holders have to be in bussines somehow (either by exploiting their patent themselves or by offering licences) as they usually won't be able to afford to simply wait and then cache in from unsuspecting "offenders" (as with the GIF-patent issue).
While I personally consider the concept of intellectual property as problematic per se, I realise that some incentive has to be given for making your brainwork publicly available. So the poposed scheme is some sort of compromise, which, while being compatible with the current patent system, might at least control some of the current abuse, by simply making hoarding patents for the sake of hoarding less profitable.
standard "oh shit" tactics (Score:3)
"will also review other 3D sites who may be using [their] technology to ensure [they] are fully compensated"
Aha! This is quite clearly, at least to me, a stab in the dark at getting money. See, their current business model isn't working, and they aren't getting any money. So they figure, "If I can't get money legitimately, I'll sue people!" So they go around claiming that everyone owes them money. This is the last gasp of a dying company, I think.
I'll make a bet: if this ploy fails, they will go on fuckedcompany.com very soon after.
Prior art abounds, I have tons... (Score:3)
Everything in that patent is already in the public domain, in the system as they describe it, predating their application. All claims can be invalidated.
If anyone has _real_ need of prior art, I'd be happy to dig through my reference collection and make everything available. I've spent years collecting docs and papers for just this event.
As a previous poster mentioned, this is the "new economy" business model. Patent office is now ran by patent sharks and incompetent examiners, so patent all you can and launch shakedown.
Earlier Example of 3D, Multi-user Chat (Score:3)
The Worlds, Inc. people almost certainly knew about this, as Tom Meyer, one of the authors, was on the VRML Advisory Group, and I'm pretty certain someone from Worlds, Inc. was on the VAG, too. This was also at the first VRML conference, in 1995. And WAXweb was one of the very first (if not the first) sites to serve VRML over the World-Wide Web.
And Stephenson's Snowcrash was all over the VRML community at that time. Everyone knew that what they wanted to do was implement the Black Sun - the bar where Hiro demonstrates his abilities as a "hacker." In fact, one of the VRML start-ups was called Black Sun.
You can go back even farther to check out Lucas's Habitat system, back in the eighties. Actually, now that I think of it, I remember hearing at the time that Worlds was planning on patenting some of this stuff - my boss at the time was Andy van Dam, one of the leading lights of computer graphics, who scoffed at the prospect of Worlds patenting anything so obvious. Andy and Tom were both all over that stuff, as they were instrumental in establishing the VRML Consortium.
A Quarter Century of Innovation (Score:3)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:3)
Well... in this case Worlds has been around for quite a while, and no one else that I'm aware of had implemented anything like shared 3d VR over the internet back when they started it.
Worlds chat was released in 1994, so it does follow Snowcrash by about two years. Can you claim fiction as prior art?
Re:Read the patent (Score:3)
Johnathan Clark has hit the nail on the head (post #292). While Worlds' PR and legal departments may claim otherwise, the core of the patent is a way for the system to keep the frame rate up: draw only the N people closest to you. And the system did exactly what he expects. People blinked in and out of the scene as they entered or left the magical group of N. Remember, this was for a 3-D *chat* company. You were expected to find 1-2 interesting people, then park yourself in front of them while you typed back and forth. If you are only a couple of "feet" from them, there's little risk that they'll pop out of your screen graph. (And remember that this was back in 1995/1996; we wanted to support 200 people in a room with only a Pentium on the client box. It was a reasonable solution.)
None of this would apply to an FPS like Quake because there are an order of magnitude fewer players in a given space, and you have to see *all* of them for the game to be playable.
It may apply to games like Everquest, however, if they do some sort of N-closest culling scheme. (Sorry, never played them, so I can't say.) If they do distance based culling, then, well, how fine do you want your hairs split? I do remember seeing a very early (free? shareware?) 3-D networked FRPG back in 1996 that might help prove prior art, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.
Claim 5 on the patent is a mish-mash of items. Some of them would never stand up to any challenge, being a mish-mash of MUD and FPS technology. (``[R]endering a 3-D view from a viewpoint of the location of the particular user''? Puh-leeze.) HOWEVER, note that the patent describes a system that goes up to *worlds* running on different servers an connecting to their own particular set of clients (see section (g)). This sounds a lot like Everquest or Diablo, and I don't know of any MUDs that scaled to that level.
See post #120 for a bit more info.
Their stuff was neat (Score:3)
Their stuff was really neat and novel, and probably deserving of protection. They brought a cool concept out to the marketplace years before others, and in doing so helped legitamize it.
You used to be able to go to Tucows and find a couple of chatting paradigms, and this one was really cutting edge back then.
Re:No, you're wrong. (Score:4)
Perhaps they are doing us all a great service. Since their patent applies to 3-D graphics and true 3-D graphics don't really exist (as an earlier poster pointed out), by the time real 3-D displays (holographic, I assume) exist this patent will have expired thus opening the realm of 3-D gaming to all without the threat of patent infingement!!! We should send them a thank you letter.
Read the patent (Score:3)
It would take quite a stretch to make this affect Quake/Duke Nukem/et al.
Nothing to worry about. Back to fragging.
Re:Read the patent (Score:3)
Re:Read the patent (Score:4)
Not only that, but they're burning $10 million dollars [worlds.com] a year. They might not be around very long.
I especially like this sentence from their April 17 2001 10KSB SEC form [yahoo.com]:
"Our auditors have expressed doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."
Bwahahahahahahaaaa!
This explaines why their stock is currently trading at 9 cents [yahoo.com].
Of course all this raises the spectre of someone else buying their 'IP' and persuing everyone under the sun, shaking them down for the 'cheap settlements out of court'...