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It's all fun and games until somebody files a lawsuit
By adamg on Sat, 03/31/2012 - 10:14am
A Brookline software company run out of its founder's house yesterday sued the makers of World of Warcraft and Call of Duty for patent infringement. Worlds Inc. alleges the two games violates patents it's received between 2007 and last December for creating and controlling 3D avatars in online environments. It's seeking unspecified, but not doubt large, damages and lawyer's fees.
Its most recent patent, issued Dec. 20, claims the rights to:
A method for enabling a first user to interact with other users in a virtual space, each user of the first user and the other users being associated with a three dimensional avatar representing said each user in the virtual space, the method comprising the steps of: customizing, using a processor of a client device, an avatar in response to input by the first user; receiving, by the client device, position information associated with fewer than all of the other user avatars in an interaction room of the virtual space, from a server process, wherein the client device does not receive position information of at least some avatars that fail to satisfy a participant condition imposed on avatars displayable on a client device display of the client device; determining, by the client device, a displayable set of the other user avatars associated with the client device display; and displaying, on the client device display, the displayable set of the other user avatars associated with the client device display.
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Comments
Patenting the wheel
Isn't this sort of the same thing? I know I just woke up and I'm probably not reading the legal jargon right, but it seems it to me.
Sounds pretty vague to me...
-The Worlds website needs a thorough copyediting job.
-They tanked in 2001 after Second Life came out.
-The WickedLocal article makes no mention of any actual customers. (Is that because WickedLocal would then have to admit that THEY have no customers? (Sorry, couldn't resist)) Sounds like one man's quixotic quest.
-Filing vague patents (like this one, which probably should never have been issued in the first place) and then suing for infringement is the last resort of companies who weren't properly positioned to cash in on their particular wave.
-Their graphics engine looks like the Sims circa 2000.
-The whole idea of people using a virtual stand-in to "hang out in cyberspace" while doing nothing in particular seems like a 90s vision of the future that never came true--not because the technology never developed, but because there's just not that much consumer interest. Witness the failure of Google Plus hangouts to catch on. I know Second Life, WoW and other games are somewhat like this and are extremely popular, but those games have actual economies/quests/purpose/etc. Are people really gonna pay to like, dick around in a virtual Aerosmith mansion? Steven Tyler is 64; he is not walking around in cyberspace, chilling with Aerosmith message board nerds. In my eyes, these client-specific "worlds" aren't expansive enough to attract MMORPG-people, and seem too gimmicky for fans.
But hey, maybe he'll win his lawsuit, or at least settle for enough money to not envy the lottery winners from yesterday.
They won't win
A half-incompetent patent lawyer is going to drive a Mack truck through their claims as either "too vague to be patentable" or "unpatentable due to prior art".
This patent is an example of a badly written patent. Either the claims are so vague as to be laughable or if you give them due weight then they crumble because they encompass so many different things that there are dozens of online chat rooms and software that predate even the filing date of the patent. Now, in America, until very recently, if you could prove that you came up with the idea before anyone else, you could use that date instead of the actual filing date. However, I seriously doubt these guys have any kind of witness-signed journals or logbooks of when they came up with this concept to be able to prove they had the idea before the first MUD was coded in the early 90's. The computer power to do half of what they claim wasn't considered realistically possible back then.
So, they're back in their Catch-22: they need the vagueness of their patent to be enforced now that they have an approved patent...but the net gets so big that they'll get caught on all of the prior art which also falls in their net thus invalidating their patentability claims.
PS - They already filed against NCSoft back in 2008. NCSoft paid them a small pittance in 2010 to go away and got the case dismissed with prejudice. I'm guessing they burned that money and now want to see if the next sucker is willing to do the same settlement. Unfortunately, I think Blizzard is going to be more than they could chew.
The patents might go down - but they might not.
Maybe.
I didn't have time to read through the complaint, nor the patents, but am merely reacting to your comment and the post.
As I am sure you know (your comment suggests that you are versed in patent law and I offer this for those who are less so), when there is an issued patent, the PTO has already examined it and determined that there was patentable subject matter over the prior art of record. Accordingly, the issued patent enjoys a presumption of validity. That means that the folks seeking to invalidate the patent bear the burden of showing that the PTO erred, that the patentees engaged in inequitable conduct, or that there was available prior art that was not cited to the PTO by the patentees and that the PTO did not find itself during examination. Any of these things are possible, but its tougher to do that than lots of people realize.
I don't think that the recent changes in the law will not bear on the question of when they invented. The changes operate on patents filed after the new legislation went into effect (and that section might not go into effect until next year - I'd have to look again). Consequently, I think that any question of inventorship would be evaluated under the "old" "first to invent" standard.
Biggest problem with software patents....
...is that they largely don't exist prior to like 15-20 years ago. Software engineers just weren't patenting a lot of things that could have reasonably been patentable. The USPTO uses previous patents for nearly all of its prior art searches. When they go searching for prior patents on this, they could have realistically come up with zero help and moved on to the next of a million patents they are behind on.
While Blizzard will have a burden of proof (and i4i proved that the patent holder is still given deference in court when it won at the Supreme Court over Microsoft), I feel like there's more than enough examples with as broad a set of claims that Worlds has for Blizzard to blow the patent apart.
biggest problem with suit will be prior art.
Worlds inc, formerly worlds.com, does hold a patent, true. But it's a vague patent with no specifics that only describes in generalities the concept of a system to interact online between avatars.
The problem, the patent filed by Worlds.com in 1996, backdated to 1994 for their prior art, is that it describes the same basic principles laid out in the 1991 FASA game book Virtual Realms, a suppliment to the Shadowrun series.
The FASA book was a continuation of the system first laid out in FASA's original Shadowrun series, copyrighted 1989.
Now my understanding is that Worlds.inc patent is based not on actual design but original and unique concept.
Problem is, for example, In Virtual realms they describe communication grids, system access nodes, 3D "avatars", user interacion via the net, avatar control and flow through the net, log on processing, security net processing. etc. This work was not even original to FASA, it was based off of advanced computer design theory.
But the biggest problem for Worlds.inc patent isn't a game called shadowrun. It's a book published in 1994 called "Virtual Reality: an overview" by J.Franchi. A book that details the evolution of the concept of 3D virtual worlds with research dated back to the 1970's by the military and universities. In the course of that book all of the patents claims as "original and unique" systems are explained in detail.
I'm not a patent lawyer, not by any means, but if that doesn't shoot down this patent, then I'm going to patent "a means by which people can move through the air with the assistance heavier than air machines".
And this is example
And this is example 152613477151351627 why we need patent law reform.