Worlds.com patent suit hits NCSoft

 Posted by (Visited 9082 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , , ,
Dec 302008
 

A while back I mentioned that Worlds.com had made known the intention to sue over their virtual world patents.

Now the other shoe has dropped, as Virtual Worlds News reports that they filed suit against NCSoft on Christmas Eve.

The patents in question deal with the notion of network culling on the server in 3d worlds, trimming down the set of things sent to the client based on server-side visibility algorithms.

Worlds.com really is a pioneer in the space — WorldsAway Worlds Chat being one of the early VW systems in the first half of the 90s. The earliest forms of the patents were filed in 1996, so pretty much all of the big 3d MMOs are later.

That said, there’s still plenty of earlier work done on network culling and yes, even 3d, and of course there’s a lot of money at stake, so expect a fight.

Worlds.com VW patents to be enforced?

 Posted by (Visited 8556 times)  Game talk  Tagged with: , ,
Dec 122008
 

Virtual Worlds News is reporting that a law firm has been retained to enforce the Worlds.com patents on 3d virtual worlds. These patents are quite old — filed in the early 90s — and center around visibility culling of avatars in various ways.

Worlds owns U.S. Patent Nos. 6,219,045 titled “Scalable Virtual World Chat Client-Server System”  and 7,181,690 titled “System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space.”

Together the claims describe systems for tracking the spatial relationships of avatars and objects in client/server systems and managing their interactions as well as how many can be displayed at any given time.

It will be interesting to watch what comes of this.