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Worlds.com threatensMarch 11th, 2009 |
The headlines kind of say it all:
- Worlds.com CEO: We’re ‘Absolutely’ Going To Sue Second Life And World Of Warcraft (ATVI).
- Worlds.com: We’ve patented the world
- Patent Troll Ready To Sue World of Warcraft, Second Life
This is in tandem with the recent news that Worlds.com was recently awarded a third patent which is a continuation of the earlier two.
The specific things that are being cited in the articles about it reference solutions for scalability.
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The amount of prior art is monumental.
But I hope Bartle is going through his papers now in preparation, if Worlds manage to successfully litigate against Blizzard. There could be a rather juicy slice of the pie…
Maybe large corporations will start setting up base in less-litigious countries too… like England!
Morgan, I said it was a semantics issue because it’s irrelevant how you describe it, the reward structure doesn’t punish greed, and greed is a successful tactic. And small business was never part of the discussion, so talking about them is irrelevant, no?
But this is besides the point, and to return some semblence of focus; I’m not trying to talk about excessive pay – and it has in fact, been mentioned no where – but this all still applies to patent trolling.
Patent trolling happens because there’s incentive, and because the downsides are far less than the potential upsides. It’s also an example of greed: I do very little actual work and bully people who have done a great deal of actual work into giving me money. I am rewarded, usually by an out of court settlement, because the costs involved in defeating me are far greater than then what I offer in settlement, especially since in the event of the not so small potential (at least in East Texas) of the target losing, my deal is much better for them. All for the cost of a patent that I have no intention of ever actually developing a product using.
Can you honestly tell me that this is a sane way for things to be run? The reward structure is heavily shifted in favor of the patent troll, despite the non-existant amount of value the troll provides. There’s your what. The why should be obvious.
And again I ask, why isn’t Doom, a multi-user 3D chat (albeit a violent one) considered prior art? Is worlds.com trying to claim a patent on the camera position? POV vs 3rd person? Hardly. It seems to me that id software demonstrates all of the aspects covered in this patent. Since the patent suit is going forward, admittely in “east Texas”, I have to conclude I am missing something. I haven’t poured over every nuance in the patent, but I did download the PDF and read it over. They are talking about basic client-server networking applied to a simulated 3D chat experience as displayed on a 2D raster monitor, right? What are the possible merits of their patent? Or are we off to discussing world peace and executive salaries now?
I strongly disagree. The press makes a big deal out of large salaries and severance pay for chief executives, but the fact is that those chief executives are few and far between. 80-90%, if not more, of business is small business. Most chief executives do not receive excessive pay, or reasonable pay for that matter. Many founders of the firms we admire today even gave up their salaries in their early days.
Legally, a corporation can exist as a separate entity; however, it’s important to not conflate legality with reality. A corporation is simply a group of people that is organized to engage in some sort of transaction with the public. I say this only because when talking about so-called “corporate greed”, the bitter folks tend to ignore the human face of the conversation.
We went from talking about patent abuse and bullying to excessive pay. I’m not really sure what you’re talking about anymore. But before we start asking about “how”, we need to start defining “what” and then figuring out “why.”
(You should note that hammering out the “what” and “why” took me eight months for this association I’m working on. Expecting anyone to solve any significant problem (e.g., patent abuse, world peace) in less than that time is a bit unreasonable. That’s why ongoing, intellectually productive discussions are so important. Time heals all wounds only when people use that time wisely.)
Sure, but similarly Morgan, because of the way the reward structure is set up, greedy people tend to bubble to the top more often than less greedy people, in the corporate setting. Whether you want to argue semantics over whether it’s the corporation that’s greedy or whether the structure merely makes greed have a bigger payoff isn’t really that relevant when it comes to dealing with the issues involved.
But I will agree that cursing at the moon is a waste of time. If the reward structure is broken, there must be a way to fix it and the focus should be on that. So the issue still needs attention. Problems cannot be addressed if they are not pointed out; answers cannot be found if the questions are not asked.
So how does one go about fixing this?
Business being a human endeavor, there’s always an element of choice. People have to choose whether to do well by doing good. When they don’t, for whatever reason, that’s when the system, the social contract, breaks down.
Recognizing that organizations are just as human as the people that comprise them is the sensible thing. The acrimonious rage against so-called “corporate greed” is, however, the domain of the deranged. People will be people. If you place your trust in that fact, you won’t be surprised when they behave that way.
The book I mentioned above talks about high-level strategies with regard to dealing with “rogue” regimes. Although the book centers on the political stage, with actors such as North Korea, Syria, and the former Iraq, instead of cursing the moon, people could be having more intellectually productive discussions about cases like this.
Morgan, and they’re not always mutually inclusive either. Unfortunately, there’s very little benefit from fighting these things through to the end much of the time, and yeah, because it’s in East Texas, it’s not even possible to count on the courts handling things properly, going on past history.
And len, the fact that it’s both obvious in terms of a solution for network culling (and it certainly looks that way at least from what I can make out under the legalese of the claims), and most definitely has prior art, means that the patent people are not doing their jobs according to the policies and law, because those two things should have prevented the patent from being filed to begin with.
Reading more about this legal issue, I see that the challenge would be to find prior art from before 1995. Since my site wasn’t in production that long ago, it isn’t going to be much help.
But what I don’t understand is why this isn’t thrown out on this basis: 3D multi-player first person shooters existed years before 1995. For instance, Doom was published in 1993 and it is a multi player first person shooter (3D graphics). You were able to chat with other players. This is, in other words, a 3D immersive environment where the only difference between what is being described in the patent and what was happening in 1993 is that the camera angle is different.
The differences are minor. In Doom, you can only see parts of your character (hands and feet and such) and in the patent by Worlds.com you see your entire character. I am not a lawyer (obviously) but I am aware that one aspect of a viable patent is that it must be significant as an invention and it may not be “self evident” to those with knowledge in the respected field.
OBVIOUSLY if one were playing Doom in 1993, this patent by Worlds.com in 1995 is at best a small step away from if not an outright duplication of the existing and published technology of that time. It may not have been obvious to a patent researcher in Washington DC in 1995, but to any teenage gamer playing Doom this was not an original invention (and thus not worthy of a patent).
This has been in the news for a while now, and the problem is not the suit, it is that the suit is filed in East Texas.
Doing good and doing well are not mutually exclusive.
No crisis is averted because prior art is found. The process of getting a patent rejected is long and will cost hundreds of thousands to low millions of dollars to whatever company stands up first. I’m sure Worlds.com will kindly offer to settle for less, and companies don’t care about what’s Right, they care about maximizing shareholder value. If you’re Blizzard and you’re sued, do you take the option that costs you $100,000 or $900,000 (and may not work) when the end result is the same?
(Sorry for posting anon, but I’ve seen patent trolls before and would prefer Worlds not to add me to their “Companies to sue” list.)
Wolfhome.com is a multi-user chat with a simulated z-axis for a 3d effect. It was started in 1999 and it’s “official” launch was Oct 31, 1999 but it was available online earlier than this. I am not sure what these patents are protecting, but a 3d simulated virtual world clearly existed on the internet in browser for prior to this. There are obviously other examples. I am worried that the lawyers are going to run this into the ground.
That is the abstract. What you want is the claims because that is what the patent lawyers try to overturn by breaking their logical referential integrity and at least restricting the scope. Note that the follow on patents are there to expand the scope.
Don’t be too confident or turn this into the ‘USPTO is dumb’ threads. That may feel good but it won’t accomplish anything. The patent guys are doing their jobs according to the policies and law. It is the virtual worlds and web industry that stuck its head in the sand and ignored the inevitabilities here. The Web3D Consortium stepped up to this problem a decade ago and solved it for their IP. The rest of you didn’t, so get your own heads out of the sand and do what you have to do to fight them in court. It would have been a lot cheaper if you had done this when smarter and more experienced people were telling you what was coming.
One wonders how this affects MMOX.
Speaking strictly from a layman’s perspective, it looks like Worlds Inc deliberately filed a fraudulent patent with full knowledge of prior art which they did not disclose in the patent application. The appropriate response to this blatant abuse of the system is a massive counterclaim, substantial enough to give other aspiring patent trolls pause.
Matt>they are all strictly 2d in terms of display, as is WoW, Everquest, etc
Actually, WoW is 3D if you have the right video card. From the 3.0.8 patch notes: “World of Warcraft now supports 3-D imaging. Visit http://www.nvidia.com/object/GeForce_3D_Vision_Main.html for more information.”
Richard
Sounds like the tactics I read about in Raymond Tanter’s Rogue Regimes.
I think it’d be funny for a court to rule that since none of Worlds.com products were 3d (they are all strictly 2d in terms of display, as is WoW, Everquest, etc), the patent is invalid.
(Joking a bit, obviously, but still, Worlds.com’s stuff was not 3d in the sense that the general public thinks of as 3d (e.g. with the blue and red glasses or whatnot).
What is worrisome about this is
if Worlds win it will probably stifle
all development of open source 3d world engines.
whew. nevermind. crisis averted.
god bless mike masnick.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20081230/0128173245.shtml
m3mnoch.
waitaminute…
he says ’95.
http://www.businessinsider.com/2008/12/patent-troll-claims-to-have-invented-virtual-worlds
the patent says 2000. there’s a huge difference for prior art there.
hrm.
m3mnoch.
here’s the actual patent:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=wv5-AAAAEBAJ&dq=7,181,690
not that i condone trolling, but it looks pretty specific to 3d worlds. so prior art may be harder to come by than i first thought.
m3mnoch.
Sums it up IMHO. Not a chance on Monkey Island they can get past the prior art problem.
So anyone with a legal background and some knowledge of the patents in quesiton want to weigh in on how likely this is to actually succeed?
I have a certain trouble imagining a judge or panel upholding such a broad and wide sweeping patent (I say this without yet reading it myself). However, considering the continuing, outright negligence with which the USPTO has been awarding such broad claims, I am not so sure.
I assume you have a patent firm discussing it… care to share?
Spot