By Alec Meer on January 6th, 2009 at 10:44 pm.
Here’s a story that hit during our week off – it’s one you probably already know about, but as it’s potentially something that’s very bad news for PC gaming, it’s only fair and right to give you fine folks a convenient place to discuss it. Massively (thanks, Larington) has one of the better summations and explorations of what’s going, as they seem to have clever people with some grasp of law on their staff. RPS, by contrast, has a philosopher, a youth worker, a biologist and a literature graduate. We’re no good at this stuff.
The crux of the story, though, concerns patents 6,219,045 and 7,181,690. In (something like) English, those refer to “scalable virtual world client-server chat system” and “system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space”. There’s space for a lot of give and take in those descriptions, but you get the point – two fundaments of pretty much every MMO past, present, and probably future.
On Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve. Man!) one Worlds.com, which currently creates, as well as its own long-running Second Lifey app, 3D virtual worlds for various clients (most recently legendary hip-hop fella DMC and Aerosmith, amusingly) flexed its patent-muscle in the direction of MMO publisher/developer NCsoft. It first filed the terrible twosome in 1996 and 2001 respectively. In other words – it does rather look as though they’ve potentially got the MMO industry by the short and curlies. In theory, Worlds can go after everyone. God only knows what they could squeeze out of Blizzard.
Rather than hitting a bunch of developers/publishers at once, though, it’s picked on a straggler – presumably in the hope of setting a precedent for future, bigger wins. It’s no secret that NCsoft isn’t in the rudest of health right now (look to the impending closure of Tabula Rasa, for instance). So they may well lack the resources to mount an impentrable defence. They’re possibly easier prey than one of the bigger boys – but prey that does nevertheless have some cash to seize.
Or at least that was the popular theory. The most recent revelation is that NCsoft hadn’t been legally served with the suit, even though it’s been filed. Filed, served, tomayto, tomato, God knows. The thing is that time’s running out for notice to be served, otherwise the whole thing dries up. Which, we’ll agree, is probably worth crossing our fingers for. Not just for the sake of MMOs today and tomorrow, but because, well, read those patent titles again. They theoretically apply to any and every online multiplayer game. Erk.
If notice is served in time, the best hope for Worlds case falling over is, apparently, a judgement that there isn’t really any other way for games to achieve what the patents cover – that it’s like trying to patent eating, or juggling.
Let’s hope the court, if it makes it that far, does feel that way. Much hinges on this – too much. Someone like Blizzard can probably stomach a big cash-squeeze, but other smaller fellas could be badly hurt by it. Then there’s what it would mean for future multiplayer games… Worlds.com: you are top-tier meanies.
I’m not a law-talking guy either, but surely the best hope for this case is that the patents in question are invalidated for any reason (prior art would be a prime candidate). It recently happened in a patent suit that Siemens brought against Seagate, the hard drive manufacturer.
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I believe I might have originally found this here, but there’s an interesting article on Gamasutra about wots wrong with the patent system and how they’re inhibiting the games industry.
I guess this is another nail in that coffin. I’d actually be interested to see this go through, just to see how it plays out.
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I don’t really understand the legal stuff behind this but surely there’s plenty of prior art that would invalidate these patents? From massively: “Patent 6,219,045 was filed in 1996 and granted in 2001. Patent 7,181,690 was filed in 2000 and granted in early 2007. Respectively those are “Scalable virtual world client-server chat system” and “System and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space”.”
Even ignoring the slew of MMOs that existed before then surely something as ancient as Essex MUD allowed you to chat to people and interact with them.
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The first Massively article I linked to goes into that a bit – sounds like prior art defence is a lot harder than it used to be.
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It’s difficult to tell what the Massively article is talking about in relation to prior art, since the three
masturbatorycolourful paragraphs it spends on the subject don’t actually manage to say anything useful. But the Siemens patents in the suit I mentioned before were invalidated due to prior art, I think.report
This is specifically about software patents and is just another example that shows us that how we think about the concept of ‘intellectual property’ in general needs to change.
Its not just the games industry either. With software patents, even things like the ‘double click’ can be patented, or a loading bar, or basically anything that comes to anybody’s mind. The cry for ‘prior art’ is far to defensive, as the whole concept is deeply flawed.
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Its my understanding from other discussions on this issue that although the initial application of the patant was pretty damn early, something like 94, there were some other attempts at virtual worlds around 93/94 that should hopefully bring an invalidation due to prior works result. Thats my hope, time will tell if thats how things work out.
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LambdaMOO and DikuMUD are prior art.
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There seems to be some misunderstanding – the patent titles refer to ‘a’ method, not ‘any’ method. Without reading the specific claims of the patent, it’s impossible to know what Worlds.com owns the rights to.
Given the validity of the average software patent lawsuit in the US, it’s in fact likely that they are entitled to diddly-squat.
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I can only imagine that they think the bigger companies such as Blizzard and co are stupid. Surely if people with no legal background like us can spot that they’re trying to set a precedent Blizzard’s army of lawyers will spot it and they’ll back up NCSoft to cover their own hide, or at least I would hope so.
Also will this be a case for a jury or a judge? Since if it’s got a jury surely there will be atleast one person on the jury that thinks “Wait a moment, what is this rubbish?”
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BTW, if you’re a developer, especially one of the ones working on a 3D MMO, I’d probably advise against looking up the patents online as apparently that can triple the damages payable to the suing company.
Just in case this crap hits the fan, you see.
Otherwise, go to google and do a search using the patent numbers, you’ll get to see details including demonstration images of how the concept is implemented in their minds, particularly for the 3D virtual world patent which has amongst other things a 3 perspective drawing of a penguin.
I kid ye not.
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Frome the 1996 patent:
I don’t think there was prior art for three dimensional MUDs in 1996.
Still I don’t think their claim is valid. Because everything from that patent was around before 1996. Three-dimensional graphics existed, and MUDs existed. And I don’t think you can claim, that you were the first to think about combining these two. It was entirely logical that the industry was moving towards 3D-graphics, and it was only a question of time until someone made a 3D-MUD.
Also software patents in general are bullshit.
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I think the patents were written to apply specifically to 3D games, whereas DikuMUD and the like are 2D at most. Of course it’s still crap, Worlds.com has no precedent for saying they invented these concepts, they’re just the only ones sleazy enough to patent them.
Hopefully ‘prior art’ is still a viable case, otherwise you may as well see Microsoft patent “an interface whereby files and programs are accessed with icons”.
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Jim, John, Kieron, and Alec?
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Gotta catch ‘em all!
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One wonders why they haven’t pressed any action until now. Though my knowledge of law proceedings is equivalent to my knowledge of something-that-I-don’t-know-much-about (I was going to come up with a humorous comparison but couldn’t think of any, sorry) so feel free someone to explain it to me in baby language if necessary.
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They must be inspired by Sco. This patent trolling stuff is happening everywhere.
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Mo: You goddit.
KG
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yay for less MMOs (doing this right ?)
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Does a patent not have to be pretty specific, or did they change the rules for software patents? If I want to patent a pencil, I have to provide a diagram of the pencil itself and how it would work. Same for a better moustrap and perpetual motion machine. Surely a software patent should provide at least pseudocode or a diagram of the processes going on within the software, or is this me being awfully naive?
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If only someone patented grinding and then sued everyone who did it…
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Just another software patent. A trawl through the Slashdot archive should give some more general background on this particular fiasco (and plenty of rants, of course).
My 10p – if this is worth defending, NCSoft will find themselves defended by the finest legal minds Blizzard et al can summon. A conglomerate of companies will put together a defence fund and in five years, the dust will settle and Worlds will have a small cash settlement.
Who wins? The lawyers.
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@I don’t think there was prior art for three dimensional MUDs in 1996.
Well, I was having my mind blown by one in ’96, so think again. Meridian 59 ring any bells for anyone?
I can’t say I’m averse to MMOs being nuked anyway. It might freshen things up a little.
It won’t happen though. Booooo.
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Oh boy, another patent troll. Just makes me wonder why our justice system has yet to create laws that punish patent trolls. I mean, to most of us techies, differentiating between a bonefide patent and a troll is as clear as day and night.
My favorite new patent troll is that russian guy who “patented” the smiley face emoticon. I wasn’t aware that you could patent something already being widely used in text communication. In soviet russia, smiley face patents you!
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As I said previously, if you are a developer currently working on an MMO, I’d recommend not looking at this document unless the patent suit has failed/fizzled/won’t-be-tried-again.
The drawings show their suggested implementation, I wonder if you’d actually have to use the details of the interface in that document to get properly sued for patent infringement.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=wv5-AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,181,690
All things considered, I wouldn’t be surprised if the ESA would get involved as well if it threatened US MMO games development enough.
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Maybe this is just publicity for a company no-one had heard of or cared about, and it won’t get past this stage. In any case, this sort of software patenting could just screw the US as MMO publishers pull out and concentrate on the Asian market. A bit like how US laws governing the export of satellite technology have screwed the US satellite industry.
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US paptents are pathologic…
In Europe there are no patents for softwares… The can move their server in Europe, or simply leave US market to monopolistic firms.
By the way… I think there are several published MMO ideas dated before 1996. I also have wrote (in 1989) an essay (at school) about persistent 3D virtual worlds were different people connected from places far away, could interact though their avatars.
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Larington: Oh, wait, NCSoft doesn’t make any games about penguins. I think we’re safe.
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Honestly this patent is ridiculous. It’s like patenting breathing! I doubt they’ll really be able to pull this one off, and if they do, they’re all going to a very special place in hell.
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I hate to admit this, but the day the attack on the World Trade Centre happened, I was actually a regular user of the Worlds.com client. They had a little comedy guessing game where you’d try to finish the jokes for the hosts and the person who got the most laughs after all the jokes had been answered would get a free 6 month vip account (Allows you to use 3D/custom avatars). Problem is they consistently failed to update the technology so it gradually looked more and more dated until even I couldn’t put up with it anymore. And this coming from someone whose been dabbling in UFO: Enemy Unknown lately.
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http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/1/2/
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waitwaitwait. explain this for idiots like me who have irrational fears of the law. What does this mean for PC gaming, in short, succint, laymans terms.
Thanx guyz.
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It means that either A: Bad guys win and lots of MMO companies have to pay out lots of money just because the first MMO company lost (Sets a precedent).
Or B: The good guys win as the opportunistic vultures get almost laughed out of court as they either suffer from incompetence or get out argued by the defence.
(This assumes you don’t think that MMO companies are the spawn of satan)
We don’t know which way its going to go because the Law is funny like that… Especially when its Judge Dredd enforcing the Looooooorrrrre… Umm, sorry, The Law TM.
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What is the difference between a man and a parasite?
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Worst case scenario, they win the suit, arrange a royalty agreement with all the MMO companies and life goes on. How exactly is this armageddon or doom? It’s clearly not in the companies interest if they win the suit to lose the royalty payments by shutting down the games. They didn’t stop selling Blackberries because they lost the patent case; they just bought a license to use the patented technology.
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Its been reported that Worlds already has law suit documents prepared to file against all the other MMO companies on the assumption they might win. In otherwords, its their hope to go to town with the ‘competition’ and make lots and lots of money via a large number of auto-win precedent law suits. Really sleazy dealing it is.
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I don’t play MMO’s (i occasionally dabble in the god aweful Anarchy online from time to time, with a mate you understand, i wouldn’t play that on my larry and be able to keep my sanity) but still, this is a bit of a shitty end of the stick.
Hope this doesn’t go down the worst case scenario.
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Can you imagine how big the nerd-rage campaign would be if Blizzard ended up paying out big or was even forced to close down WoW?
Maybe thats what the Mayan prophecy has been going on about all this time. (I kid, of course)
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man, legal issues are becoming the sales figures of PC gaming
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What a way to start out 2009 huh?
Correct me if I am wrong here for a moment. Wouldn’t these patents also include non-mmo multiplayer games such as Counter-Strike, TF2, pretty much any game with a 3D world environment, and an in-game chat system?
If they get their way with this, they could pretty much ruin a lot of game developers with lawsuits. Hell they could probably sue the pants off of Id Software for Quake.
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Reminicent of this suit against Duke Numem 3D, from 11 years ago:
http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/1997/08/6252
Which got nowhere. I’d be pretty surprised if this can of worms doesn’t suffer the same fate.
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Even though the odds of this happening are slim enough to counted as zero, I am still entertained by the idea that WoW could be shut down by this suit. I’d never have to hear any more talk of min-maxing, spreadsheeting, battlegrounds and all the other things about WoW that I have to listen to every day. I’d have two roommates instead of two WoW players for the first time since I moved in. They’d probably get into some other games, but they’d be games I could play with them, games that don’t require grinding or gear-checking or any of that stuff.
It would be heaven.
And I’d never again have to hear that insufferably snide shit about “11 million can’t be wrong!”. 5 years of hearing that and 11 million people can lose a potentially major part of their lives for all I care.
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Man, that would be a pisser. Surely no-one is that heartless and money hungry? I understand moneys important in this day and age (which I hate, acctually) but jesus!
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Do you mean the CRUX of the story? A CRUTCH is a device used to support someone with a broken leg (something this story needs); a CRUX is a centerpiece, or cross; colloquially, it can be used to indicate the GIST of a story, which is what I think was intended. The gist of my comment is that bad writing almost always ends up causing the kinds of confusion this piece causes.
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The only patent applicable before 2001 is the “scalable virtual world client-server chat system” one, and since it doesn’t specify it being 3D there’s no problem. The 2001 one is vague enough that, ironically, even things like Quake could be used by the defence as prior art.
This will fail. The combined legal forces of every company that makes online games of any type will see to that.
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Of course PODON, bad writing is solely made up of one word and absoloutley nothing else.
And yes, 11 million people can be wrong. People are idiots, remember. I’d like so much to say people are worth it but lets face it, most people are feckless drones with mechanical workings for innards. So yes; 11 million can be wrong.
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I hope that some judge, somewhere, happens to be a WoW addict.
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Equally depressing news, but this one much more real. 1up got bought by UGO and they fired most of the staff.
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3172156
Just fucked up, they had a site i went back to for the podcasts and the features, but now its dead.
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Air Warrior had a system where each user-pc-client had an avatar and reported its position and orientation to a server, which furnished each client with a sub-set of avatars and orientations based on location.
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@BooleanBob
A man is a one-dimentional being who live on analogies.
A parasite is a bug.
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Lives, damn you, lives!
*gets back to mixing potions*
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there is definitely 3d multiplayer games before 1996
multiplayer battle tech was one of them .
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Perhaps Blizzard should lend them some lawyers from the bucket.
In all seriousness, the large US-interest MMO companies should band together, a loss for NCSoft makes it all the more expensive for whoever’s next on the list.
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2009: Year of the depressing news?
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Tangent: Peter Moore wonders why World of Goo won a Eurogamer award rather than his novel arthouse hit Fifa 09:
http://itsinthegame.ea.com/archive/2009/01/01/wtf-where-the-hell-is-fifa-09.aspx
P.
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I think this is the proof that the current patent system is pretty fucked up, just look at what kind of stuff MS and Apple patent, some so obvious and widespread in use that it is just awkward. Although they have a reason to do so, so that noone else can do it and file a suit on them, called patenttrolling….
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I think this is the proof that the current patent system is pretty fucked up
It’s really only US patent law, and particularly software patents, that are “fucked up”, and the US jurisdiction and entirely OTT costs of prosecution in the US don’t help, either.
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Is that a invention?, looks to me like a solution to a common problem. 2+2= Can you patent “4″?
lame, USA patente system, very lame.
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This, this right here, is why IP law SUCKS.
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The part of my brain that tries to force everything into the convenient narrative moulds of television drama just envisioned an eleventh hour backroom meeting between Blizzard and NC Soft, where Blizzard offers them the use of their ace legal team. This, of course, occurs after our plucky, somewhat naive hero–an up and coming NC Soft executive who hasn’t yet bought into the soulless cult of corporation–has undergone great personal trials in order to convince the behemoth software developer that his/her plan would really benefit everyone.
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I’m with Ted and jonfitt; if they win I can’t see them gutting this golden goose. Just take 0.001% of everything and retire to the custom built space station of your choice. Crazier things have happened though.
And yeah, Blizzard and others might want to help NCsoft out on this. And anyone with any vague ideas on expansive worlds with chatting, say… Google for instance. The EFF should probably turn up on principle and everyone can have a good look at this.
On the other hand I wouldn’t be surprised if the big boys are thinking awful hard about their defense so that they don’t set any precedents which conflict with future patents they might like to make.
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On this scan of the patent, the internet words LOL are used.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=wv5-AAAAEBAJ&pg=PA3&dq=7,181,690&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1_1
And LOL is a good comment about a patent, that simple patent “limiting sending the coordinates of players to these in sight of the player”.
Thats what BSP is all about, portalization, VISing, etc.. only this patent as ZERO technology in it, it only expose the problem, not how the problem is solved.
This is like me patenting teleportation as:
“Moving people from point A to point B”, withouth zero ideas about how to do that.
The patent is stupid, as zero originality, and as zero technology in it. Because it describe ZERO ways to solve problems, it only describe a problem that is soo common, any 3d (or 2D) chat will meet.
Please, ban this World.com guys from existence into oblivium.
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@BooleanBob: What is the difference between a man and a parasite?
Men wear shoes.
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There needs to be sharper regulation on gaming patents. This is far too general and unspecific – like a patent against having men aged 25-40 wearing hats in a major motion picture. The problem isn’t just that Worlds.com are taking action over this patent (and how cynical to take down the weaker, injured and limping studio from the pack rather than alpha male Blizzard) it’s that they managed to file the patent in the first place.
Widiculous.
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By that logic, RTS genre would have been patented long ago and alot of people would have been sued today. Worlds.com will lose.
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So did I get this right? This is a US patent that is only enforceable in the US?
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Yes. You can’t patent software in the EU. You can only copyright it. So worst case is, that this would close WoW in the US, but nothing would happen in the rest of the world. More realistically, they are just going to force everyone to pay them for using their patent.
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This fills me with hate and annoyance. Not that I play any online MMO games but seriously, guys, this sucks. I remember reading about software patents that still exist (possibly on here) that have some really good ideas, now condemned to be kept to one company. There’s a vague statement if ever there was one…
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Time Line for Worlds.com and its prior art
1994 The original team put together Worlds Chat, including Dave Leahy, Andrea Gallagher, Wolf Schmidt, Judy Challinger, Syed Asif Hassan, Farshid Meshgali, Kurt Kokko, John Navitsky, Naggi Asmar, David Tolley and many others. Jeff Robinson (a.k.a. Scamper, the Combat Wombat) working with Helen Cho was World Chat’s first artist, and is responsible for much of the “better-lit alien” look of the space station.
1995
Ron Britvich joined KAW. He worked on the AlphaWorld (renamed Active Worlds) project inside KAW, along with the “official” product Worlds Chat. KAW was renamed as Worlds Inc. Lynne Ann and Danny Viescas joined Worlds Inc. as avatar and object makers, David Leahy was the Integrator and Producer for Worlds 1994 -1997. He developed Cyber Oz City.
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Well, Meridian 59 was launched on 27. September 1996 while the patent was filed at 12. November 1996.
But without beeing a patent lawyer, I’m not even trying to guess if it’s prior art or not.
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Jesus, that 1up thing is bullshit.
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@Helio: Yeah, big business claims yet more victims. [Sighs]
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Men and (possibly) women of the RPS comments thread. May I present to you my first witness. Mr Doom, would you please take to the stand. Can you please tell us what you did in 1993?
“I brought my charm into the world, allowing up to four people to play together”.
Did people talk?
“Why yes. How else could they share obscenities?”
Fascinating! But why only four people?
“We didn’t have the technology capable of more. Given a few years, I’m sure we could’ve had hundreds of people playing together”.
And there we have it! You heard it yourself! A “scalable virtual world client-server chat system” and “system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space” in 1993, 3 years before the first patent was placed! Similarly, a Mr. Ultima Online began his life in 2005 and was shown to the world in May 2006, 6 months before the first patent was filed. These patents cannot be held due to patenting ideas and inventions of other people that already existed. I rest my case.
PS: I’m guessing that if there is a jury, half will be WoW fans, while the rest play other MMOs or have dabbled.
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So lets get this straight. The first patent
“scalable virtual world client-server chat system”
was filed in 1996. So the first only covers server side chat, like in many really basic MUDs that have already been mentioned had for ages before the patent was filed.
And the second
“system and method for enabling users to interact in a virtual space”
in 2001, seems even weaker. Early multi-player FPS had users “interacting” in 3d “virtual space.” The famous Quake 3 had been around for 2 years IIRC. (I may not though :D)
And arguably Doom’s LAN mode, released in 1993, invalidates both patents.
Seems weak to me.
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There’s every economic incentive for the patent office to grant patents, and none for them to deny crap ones.
Anyone with common sense knows where that leads.
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Speaking of PC legalese, anyone catch this:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article5439604.ece
Only really relevant to fellow Brits, but if I get the jist of it, the police may legally gain access to your PC and files without a warrant showing due cause etc.
Lousy liberty-infringing government. :(
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don’t jump to assumptions that the title of a patent is exactly what the patent covers: the coverage of a patent is defined by the claims of the patent.
The first claim of the earlier case is as follows:
“1. In a system for interaction between a plurality of users in a three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where the system includes at least one server coupling a plurality of clients where each client addresses a client display, a method of representing interactions among the plurality of clients on a display of a target client comprising the steps of:
identifying a position of a local avatar of a user of the target client, the position being a position relative to the graphical space;
determining a maximum displayable avatar count for the target client;
determining a total avatar count for the server, wherein the total avatar count indicates the number of clients connected to the server;
when the total avatar count is greater than the maximum displayable avatar count for the target client, limiting the number of avatars processed by the target client to the maximum displayable avatar count, wherein the step of limiting is performed at the target client; and
displaying, on the client display, the avatars processed by the target client.”
Simply put, if WoW or any of the others don’t implement all of the steps of this method, then they don’t infringe the claim.
In addition, if there is prior art available before 1996 that describes this method, then this claim may be invalid.
The second case, while filed in 2000, is actually a continuation of the first application, which complicates things a bit as it too can be backdated to 1996. This case also appears to have a broader claim 1:
“1. A method for enabling a first user to interact with other users in a virtual space, wherein the first user and the other users each have an avatar and a client process associated therewith, and wherein each client process is in communication with a server process, wherein the method comprises:
(a) receiving a position of less than all of the other users’ avatars from the server process; and
(b) determining, from the received positions, a set of the other users’ avatars that are to be displayed to the first user,
wherein steps (a) and (b) are performed by the client process associated with the first user.”
Without saying anything about what prior art might be available prior to ’96, it would appear that the claims of the second patent would be harder to avoid.
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Just FYI 3DO released Meridian59 on 10/31/96 the First 3D MMO. It has been a long time since I played Meridian59 but I think it was implemented as described in the two patents.
(Woot! Go server 105!)
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@Rei Onryou
UO (Ultima Online) was released September 25, 1997. I should know since it had started the first great MMO game switch.
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@Dag
I know, but production plus its unveiling (the public becoming aware of it) was before 96.
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Standard patent trolling. If anything tweaking Blizzard’s tail like this is likely to hasten the end of the rubbish broken system they’re using *over there* currently…
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“s it’s potentially something that’s very bad news for PC gaming,”
I would strongly dispute the idea that the death of the MMO is “bad news for PC gaming” from an end-user perspective.
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The Doom bit was amusing, but I would think an personified version of Doom would talk more like the guy in the legendary Doom comic.
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