More legal troubles

As reported on Massively yesterday;

"It seems to be a World of Lawsuits (TM) recently in our industry. Bloggers are being sued for libel, NCsoft is being sued for patent infringement, Linden Labs is being sued for trademark violations, Turbine is suing Atari, and now five companies are all being sued over a patent dispute."

This time it might really be a problem because this company has already won against Microsoft!

http://www.massively.com/2009/09/16/...-patent-infri/

Mods; if this is in the wrong place, please move it to the correct forum.

Very old news that's been discussed at length in other threads. The company suing them doesn't have much of a case at all.

Even though I side with the creators of patents it would have been nice of this group to make it known they had a patent before now. EQ and UO are what? 10+ years old?

Keeping quiet about a patent, waiting for as many people to get involved with it as possible, and then springing lawsuits on everyone reeks of cowardice and underhandedness. If you have a patent, defend it.

I agree. There should be some sort of statute of limitations for patents in cases like this.

I think Tim Berners-Lee should sue every company in the universe - then reward me for the suggestion.

Madness or Sparta?

They didnt win, Microsoft settled for reportedly under 200K which included the licence. I think Microsoft figured that the legal costs might have ended up higher then the settlement.

As an aside, you'll see more lawsuits simply because MMO's are big business now and where there's money there are vultures.

He can himself be sued over his "invention" of www. Oh and it's "Sir" now ;P

The PalTalk litigation seems to be a strong one where settlement may be sought by Turbine to avoid unnecessary problems, as Microsoft did.

Sad sad world where everyone uses patents as weapons rather than a protection mechanicsm.

I invented the internet! Now im going to sue every website that uses it!

Will you use the proceeds to fight global warming?

And if he doesn't reward you, you can sue him for using your ideas! lol
...oh wait, put in a patent first just to be sure you have a failsafe.


To put it simply, this is a messed up place we live.

Why is it we still don't have a law against patent squatting yet?? It's wrong that any company can buy a patent they don't intend to do anything with and wait a couple years before target company builds enough revenue just so they can sue them for millions.

"GET RICH QUICK!" schemes like this really have to go due to the fact it's taking advantage of the system by using it as a weapon rather then actually protecting anything.

I invented global warming, if he does, I'm comin' after him!

I should patent patents...

What I'm curious about - how does one have a patent on the way 'computers share data'? That seems very broad, and most patents tends to be very specific, hence why you see multiple products that are nearly identical but different enough to avoid patent infringement.

Lawlsuits - America's new pastime!

Sorry baseball.

That was discussed pretty heavily in the last thread... several people noted that the method of human interaction with avatars and the way those avatars experience the online world was the big issue. I don't really recall what exactly it was, but obviously there are going to be major difference in this based on UI, game engine, rendering process, etc.

Now, if I missed the gist and it really is a patent on how computers share data, then the folks holding the patent probably could have called in that patent LONG ago when it still looked legitimate and made themselves a nice nest egg forever.

IANAL, but during school I took quite a few classes that either focused on IP, or discussed it (a must for engineers).

Generally, when you write a patent, you have a set of claims that you are patenting. You start off with very general claims that encompass your idea and anything you think might be related/you may develop based on your invention. Each succeeding claim is more specific.

When you go to court to defend your patent, you always try to defend the most general claim possible, with the understanding that you will probably have to settle for a more specific one. If you settle for the most specific, you are in a bad position, because then there are a lot of ways to get around your technology and your patent becomes pretty worthless.

For example, I could sat I claim 1) a method of talking to people remotely via computers; 2) a method of (1) using wireless interface with integrated hardware encryption; 3) a method of (1,2) using a 1024 bit sassafras encryption and <blah> protocol stack to ensure reliability and security.

You would try to protect claim one, which should be thrown out. You may get #2, and would definitely get #3 (assuming you created those protocols). This isn't the best example, but I think it makes the point. You take the most general features of your invention and protect those, and expect that it will fall to a little more specific one.

the problem is a) the most general claim is the one being granted, which shouldn't often be the case, and b) patents are being offered where there is prior art or that are obvious to someone in the field. I think patents are a great thing, but unfortunately, they are giving them out like candy to anyone that says, "I have an idea," without actually checking to see if the idea already exists. I believe this is because every shmoe is filing patents, and there are not enough patent officers to thoroughly research the literature.

Hello, anyone still awake?

"A method or scam, whereas one party files a broad patent, as to secure a wide range of possible implementations and then waits for a more specific application that can be included in said definition to be implemented successfully by another enterprise, in which chase said party busts in to claim monetairy compansation for the violation of said patent, after said enterprise has made a sufficient revenue to be milked profitably."

There must be someone with a patent on patent infringement scams out there...

Still awake!

And I see - I must admit I don't know much about patent law and was just stating what I've seen from my own observations. Thanks for that explanation though, that makes this make more sense.

Doesn't stop it from being stupid, of course, but it makes more sense.

http://www.boingboing.net/2008/11/17...-tries-to.html

Software patents are really depressing.

This one great way to make people want to support/play your games.