Microsoft's Online Spectator Patent 118
Next Generation reports on Microsoft's 5000th patent: an online spectator mode for competitive games. From the article: "The system will allow online viewers who are not involved in actual gameplay to view game highlights and instant replays, as well as let them control camera perspectives. A statement from Microsoft also describes 'A portal such as a Web site to access spectator-related services such as schedules and information on multiple games and events as well as the number of spectators and participants in each. The portal allows the spectator to find the most popular games to watch, preview the action, and then connect to the desired game or event.'"
XBox port of HLTV? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:2)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:3, Informative)
I've no idea how long it had the ability to do so before I started playing. Anyway you didn't participate in the game while you were an observer. Guess that could serve as prior art to this nonsense.
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:1)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:1)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:2)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:3, Insightful)
And as usual the idea isn't to come up with a bulletproof patent, but rather to raise the cost of entry for smaller players. Vivendi would have no problem taking this down if they wanted to. Popcap (or similar) wouldn't even try.
Defensive Patent (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:2, Insightful)
But don't expect this to stop the slash-herd from making dozens of +5 insightful comments about M$ being evil.
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem isn't that microsoft is some sort of white hat only out to protect themselves. If it were true, then some licnese that allow the use of thier "protective" pattents without royalties would be availible and publicaly known. Germany said it was protecting it's borders and we belived them while they built armies up along thier borders in a situation that later became known as World War Two.
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:2)
And it's not a bad thing, necessarily. If some real 'white hat' in your eyes got the pattent and then liscensed it to everyone for free, there would be little incentive to invest in developing it.
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:2)
But I'm still stuck on the fact that people see them grabbing the pattents to stop other from using it agains them as something inocent and claiming that microsoft will never take steps to prevent anyone else form using them because they havn't yet (except fat32). Microsoft grabbs the pattents for reasons not disclosed to us. We know part of the reasons is to stop other from using it on them and we know from history that microsoft has asserted pattents on others to protect thier inte
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:2)
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:2)
If you let a technoligy become a standard or wideley used before asserting ownership then you loose all rights to ownership. Maybe even a specific "obvious test" were it attempts to determin if something like single click online shoping is obvious and simular to a checkout line at the regular store and cannot be pattented.
That is of course if we must keep software pattents. I'm thinking that copyright would do just fine and allow competition
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Defensive Patent (Score:1)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:1)
Re:XBox port of HLTV? (Score:1)
Done before? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Done before? (Score:2)
Re:Done before? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Done before? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Done before? (Score:2, Informative)
hltv.org was registered back in April of 2002. Perhaps it was around in some other form prior to moving to its own domain.
I wonder if my 4 year old portal is now patented, and i should be paying royalties to Microsoft
Considering Microsoft filed for the patent back in August of 2001, anything's possible.
Re:Done before? (Score:1)
Re:Done before? (Score:3, Funny)
I wouldn't be surprised...
Re:Done before? (Score:1)
Re:Done before? (Score:3, Informative)
Yep, another live one (Score:3, Insightful)
from TFA "Microsoft's goal is to file 3,000 patents per year."
Amazing. Do they have some sort of Patent Counter in the shape of a dollar sign sitting in a Redmond office building, slowly filling with the blood of lesser companies who are being forced to compensate Microsoft when they use what was once an innovative feature, now solely under Bills control?
At the end of the year, when they are around 2900 patents, what will they resort to in order to fulfill their goal? How does this sound, "Microsoft patents interactive software." I mean, that hasn't been done yet, right?
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, because nobody has ever done that before *cough* Unreal Tournament *cough*.
True, but Quake 1 had it even before that. Way before 2001, which was when MS filed for this patent.
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:1)
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:2)
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:1)
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:1)
I would hope that the preponderance of "intervening art" would help prove how obvious the idea is and invalidate the patent that way. But as other posters have said... given the way the current patent/legal system
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:1)
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:2)
in that case, i pattent Green! ha!
Re:Yep, another live one (Score:2)
Blizzard Games? (Score:2)
Re:Blizzard Games? (Score:2)
Right motivation, wrong goal... (Score:5, Funny)
I'd rather have them fix 3,000 bugs per year.
Re:Right motivation, wrong goal... (Score:1, Offtopic)
Clever, but they probably fix over 100x that many bugs per year.
Sure, Microsoft software may have a repuation for being buggy, and it may even be deserved (or it may not -- I'm not getting into that here.) But considering just how many software packages they put out (Microsoft does far more than Windows and Office) even fixing millions of bugs/year wouldn't surprise me. And as for 3,000 bugs, I'm guessing that even one relatively simple Xbox game may ha
Re:Right motivation, wrong goal... (Score:2)
Re:Right motivation, wrong goal... (Score:3, Funny)
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Microsoft's 5000th patent? (Score:5, Funny)
On the bright side, all possible ideas will be public domain by 2047.
Re:Microsoft's 5000th patent? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Microsoft's 5000th patent? (Score:1)
WOW!
idiot
Re:Microsoft's 5000th patent? (Score:1)
Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:2, Insightful)
I hold to that belief today. Everything useful to me as a trade secret stays in my head.
Patents were intended to protect the desire to invent. The slippery slope of using government to protect anything rears its ugly head here, and it is obvious that patent laws can not work -- they'll always be corrupted, slowly buy surely, over the years. Rather than try to use "men with guns" to protect inventors, how a
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:5, Insightful)
Income from these ideas
Proof that I ever had such ideas first
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:3, Insightful)
And were you to suddenly die, every brilliant idea you've had would be lost to humanity until someone else thought it up. That's not a net (+).
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:2)
And were you to suddenly die, every brilliant idea you've had would be lost to humanity until someone else thought it up. That's not a net (+).
Who knows? If all of his brilliant ideas are as brilliant as his idea protection scheme, it might be a net gain.
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course "men with guns" are not only involved with just patents, but with other types of IP laws as well. So if "men with guns involved" means somethings needs to be done away with that means:
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:3, Insightful)
As for trademarks, I don't see why protections are needed. If a company makes a good product, they need to make individual agreements with other individuals that want to sell their product. In the end, the retailer is the one making sure you get the product you want. Sure, someone could knock off Coca-Cola's logo and product, and some retailers might ac
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:1)
Ya think?
People pay $2 for water made by Coca-Cola because they're IDIOTS that want to look good. Perrier? Hell no, I'm cool so I'll buy DASANI. So Coca-Cola produce it, market it, sell it for a high price and people buy it...what a bunch of pricks those Coca-Cola people are. Gee, God forbid I ever come up with any ideas that people will willingly pay over the odds for. I'd hate myself for selling it to them. Oh wait, no...I'd market
Re:Anti-patent and proud of it (Score:2, Insightful)
Won't work (Score:2)
As an engineering major I can tell that this is a really bad idea for anything but comp
Re:Poo on you (Score:2)
Re:Poo on you (Score:3, Insightful)
Trade secret protection lasts indefinitely, but cannot be exploited in the same way patent protection can.
Re:Poo on you (Score:3, Insightful)
Good God, you don't seriously believe that, do you?
Coca-Cola's formula is worthless. If you produced a product that was identical down to the last molecule (either by acquiring their formula somehow, or simply by buying Coke and rebranding it), you would sell no better than any of the myriad other fizzy brown sugar waters, and I would be able to produce thousands of witnesses w
Prior art? (Score:2)
Re:Prior art? (Score:1)
id Software (Score:2)
Patent Protections (Score:4, Interesting)
This won't stand up in court. It used to be that the most challenging part of invention protection was receiving a patent. Once you had a patent, most federal courts would uphold the defensibility of the invention.
Today, the patent office has pushed the responsiblity of invention defense to the federal court system. The statistics bear our that many, many more patents are being awarded, with much higher percentages of success. On the other hand, Federal Courts are siding with patent holders much less than they used to. The system is not necessarily broken, it only means that a patent is worth less and easier to obtain than it used to be.
No, the system IS broken. (Score:5, Insightful)
Defending against a bogus patent in court is WAY beyond the means of most mortals; justice overpriced is justice denied. Preventing worthless patents in the first place is the way the system is intended to work, and getting it back there is, alas, the only real solution to the present idiot situation.
Re:No, the system IS broken. (Score:2)
Almost all the error is based on one misconception-- that the patent syst
Re:No, the system IS broken. (Score:2)
As I see it, the real issue isn't big guys vs small guys, but a massive and growing number of trivial patents that must be fought in court when
Re:No, the system IS broken. (Score:2)
1) Open source software. Once an implementation of a proprietary system is out there, the genie is really out of the bottle.
2) The Internet. Means that anything created as a result of 1) can instantly be spread around the globe.
I have personally been battling a small part of the patent system recently. I've been looking for software to help me transcode video in batches. I've looked a huge variety of c
patent defense is expensive (Score:5, Insightful)
Add to that the ridiculous patents being awarded today, and we are completely fucked by this shit.
Who doesn't have this? (Score:1)
Re:Who doesn't have this? (Score:1)
Legitimate Via Bungie? (Score:4, Interesting)
Since Myth was a creation of Bungie, who got bought out by MS some time ago, I think, as loathe as I am to admit it, that MS might actually have a legitimate claim to this patent. Well, as legitimate as any software patent can be, anyway.
Re:Legitimate Via Bungie? (Score:1)
Publish and Patents Perish with a Poof (Score:3, Informative)
Of course, this is the USPTO we're talking about here; they'll apparently issue a patent on ANYTHING if one is persistent enough...
Re:Publish and Patents Perish with a Poof (Score:1)
Re:Legitimate Via Bungie? (Score:3, Insightful)
Haven't looked at the patent yet, so I don't know exactly what they're claiming, but I wrote an on-line spectator mode for the PLATO game Empire in around 1981. It allowed for changing view (by choosing which ship to follow), and also recorded the game for later playback (in 5 minute increments). The earliest game I still have recorded that I know about is from 1984.
I would think that any enhancements to the basic concept (such as moveable cameras, looking at stats, live replaying as opposed to waiting u
bah (Score:1)
all these games allowed this
is invention just not important to the process anymore?
this patent is not original, not non-obvious, not new,
woo! (Score:1, Insightful)
Toilet cam .... prior art (Score:2)
OMFG (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:OMFG (Score:1)
An even better idea! (Score:5, Funny)
Hope no-one has thought of this already else prior art might invalidate any patents.
Re:An even better idea! (Score:2)
on the internet.
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Re:An even better idea! (Score:2)
Interesting milestone (Score:4, Informative)
prior art (Score:1)
i can remember many an evening of watching an awesome game of 32 player tribes2
Re:prior art (Score:2)
And the only thing better than T2TV was playing in the game.
No matter how much prior art we claim (Score:1)
I claim prior art in describing this in a story I wrote in 1980 while at Simon Fraser University, in The GOT club magazine.
You'll find copies in the Library of Congress and the Canadian version thereof.
The Rocky Prior Art Horror Show (Score:4, Funny)
"... In another dimension ..."
With voyeuristic intention
Well secluded, I see all
It's astounding .... MS got prior art'd by the Time Warp [rockymusic.org] ... Again!
Definitely not new (Score:2)
Copywrighting one of my ideas (Score:2)
Prior Art? (Score:2)
A statement from Microsoft also describes 'A portal such as a Web site to access spectator-related services such as schedules and information on multiple games and events as well as the number of spectators and participants in each. The portal allows the spectator to find the most popular games to watch, preview the action, and then connect to the desired game or event.'"
I can already do any and all of these things via any of the numerous online poker sites I visit.
hltv, quake tv (for q2), ut. (Score:2, Informative)
Micro$oft as usual... (Score:1)
Re:Micro$oft as usual... (Score:1)
This would've been an edit but.... (Score:1)
even older than counterstrike (Score:1)
Moot Point (Score:1)
Since all software can be broken down at its lowest level to be just a series of mathematical equations, and you can not patent mathematical equations, you should not be able to patent software. You SHOULD be able to copyright it, but not patent it.
Re:Power to the PowerPC processor! (Score:1)