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Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games? Kinda. 260

Posted by Hemos from the gonna-get-squashed dept.
Eddie Edwards writes "This story over at Gamasutra details how Worlds.com have been awarded US patent 6,219,045 for - well, for more-or-less exactly the client-server architecture used in Quake. As the article says, "the company believes the patent may apply to currently in-use multi-user games" (!) and Worlds.com "will also review other 3D sites who may be using [their] technology to ensure [they] are fully compensated". " Of course, Worlds.com will prolly get squashed on the prior art issue - but wow. From what I can see, IANAL, it's not so much Quake-like games, but more like 3D chat-game-type environment.
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Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games More

Worlds.com Patents Quake-like Games

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  • Netrek (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I just glanced at the patent, and I know that I'm slightly off topic here, but I thought I'd mention that Netrek (an open source 2D game with a client-server architecture) was used to support a motion to invalidate some of the claims in patent 5,822,523 dealing with Internet messaging. The companies involved settled out of court, so the patent wasn't overturned. But that was probably one of the first IP lawsuits in history to use an open source game as the primary reference in a motion. The motion papers should no longer be confidential, so I'll see if I can post it if you guys want to see it. -d

  • (Sorry for the AC post, but I don't have a Slashdot account).

    I was an employee at Worlds back in 95/96/97, and I'd like to point out one or two issues on the patent to help people looking for prior art.

    We were hoping for massively multiuser systems and needed a way to cut down on the number of avatars shown. Claims 1, 3 and 4 are more or less "Display on-screen only the N avatars closest to me". Claim 2 says that you can configure N for your machine.

    Claim 5 is roughly a MUD architecture, except for the new position-in-room data going back and forth. What's not obvious this that while section (e) ("list of avatars displayable") seems to refer to claim (g) ("which room the client is currently in"), it could also refer to work we did for later architectures, where the server determines the N closest avatars to display (this reduces network bandwidth). Be on the lookout for another 1996 patent along those lines.

    Me, I did the figure display and animation playback code for two products (including the one they're currently selling). I got laid off when they closed down my office in early 1997. From what I can tell, they sold the remains of the company in 1998 (note the gap in the press releases on the site), and the new owners haven't improved the technology at all since.

    Derek (worlds@celia.serv.net)

  • Re:Is it just me... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    From the back of "Snow Crash"

    The idea of a "Virtual reality" such as the Metaverse is now widespread in the computer-graphics community and is being implemented in a number of different ways. The particular vision of the Metaverse as expressed in this novel originated from idle discussion... etc

    The words "avatar" (in the sense used here) and "Metaverse" are my inventions, which I came up with when I decided that existing words (such as virtual reality") were simply too awkward to use.

    After the first publication of Snow Crash, I learned that the term 'avatar' has actually been in use for a number of years as part of a virtual reality system called Habitat, developed by F Randall Farmer and Chip Morningstar. The system runs on Commodore 64 computers, and though it has all but died out in the US, is still popular in Japan. In addition to avatars, Habitat includes many of the basic features of the Metaverse as described in this book.

    So it's probably a good idea to go looking for Habitat, people.

    Kaiidth, posting anonymously because of that password I mentioned.
  • Not if they applied for the patent before those games came out (there's often a long delay between patent filing and patent granting, so this patent may actually have been applied for a long time ago; I'm not sure).
  • Yeah, I played Quake1 shareware sometime in late95/early96. I remember cuz I moved summer 96 and it was before that. =]
  • It's dated: April 17, 2001 / Nov. 12, 1996
  • Actually, I got the impression that it was limiting the number of displayed users for a given client that the patent focused on.

    Also, it should be noted that the client performs this filtering. This sort of stuff has been done server-side by games like Air Warrior for years.

  • I think that Meridian 59 dates back far enough to to be well establish prior art against this crap. (let's see Meridian 59 was online/under development well by 1995 if not earlier).

    I know 3DO bought the company out and took over the title in 1996 because I was at the announcement dinner at the 1996 E3 show. I also had a friend who modelled some of the original artwork in the game at some point in 1995 or earlier.
  • It was released waaaay before 96 and it included multiplayer. I can't remember if Wolfenstein did, so Doom might not even be the first.
    ___
  • So, even if they get smacked back with Prior Art, what's stopping the person with the Prior Art from establishing the same dumb-ass patent? (Kind of OT, but I've always been curious about that - what if this hoopla just makes someone say to themselves, "Oh, I can patent this? Why didn't someone tell me?")

  • Re:Is it just me... (Score:3)

    by Kiwi ( 5214 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @01:04PM (#265417) Homepage Journal
    Can you claim fiction as prior art?

    Yes. In more detail, when someone tried to patent the waterbed, Stranger in a Strage Land was cited, invalidating the patent.

    - Sam

  • They've been at it since before 96.. AlphaWorlds, anyone? Try 95, or earlier..

    Adrenaline Vault had a big construct on one of their worlds, was how I found the online gaming community..

  • A proposed solution to frivolous patents (Score:3)

    by Ignatius ( 6850 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @05:24PM (#265419)
    Since patents are basically a temporary right granted to inventors by limiting the rights to use certain ideas for the whole society, why not charging a licence fee or tax for the duration of this privilege - very much like the state is charging telephone companies for the right to use limited frequency ressources.

    The space of ideas (esp. in the field of software patents where usually every hacker thinking longer about a problem will come up with a simmilar solution) is clearly a public ressource to all mankind, so I don't see why patent holders shouldn't pay for their temporary monopoly to exploit parts of it, esp. as the common practice of look-away or defense-only patents doesn't serve the original intent of making new technology faster available.

    What about the following scheme: everybody who files for a (justified) patent has to fix a buyout price for it (i.e. should a group of people or companies pay the patent holder this price, then the patent immediately becomes void and the technology is from then on free for everybody to use). The holder of the patent is then required to pay an annual percentual tax (something about 1 to 5 %, maybe also increasing with time) of this price for as long as he wishes to uphold the patent (up to it's maximum duration). The buyout price can be annually adopted within a certain range (say +/- 20%) by the holder to react to new technological developements.

    A annual patent fee would make it expensive to hold on to patents which don't generate revenue (and therefor don't help promote technology), be it either because they are bogus to begin with (no one will pay amazon a dime for their one-click patent since it is probably not valid in the first place), or simply useless or obsolete.

    This also has the additional benefit of keeping the number of patents low (which is always a good thing, as it means more freedom for everyone and less restrictions on innovation, or - in one word - less lawyers) while not cutting too much into the legetimate revenue of the holders.

    It also makes the patent market more transparent and reduces the risk of abiguities or unintentional violations as patents holders have to be in bussines somehow (either by exploiting their patent themselves or by offering licences) as they usually won't be able to afford to simply wait and then cache in from unsuspecting "offenders" (as with the GIF-patent issue).

    While I personally consider the concept of intellectual property as problematic per se, I realise that some incentive has to be given for making your brainwork publicly available. So the poposed scheme is some sort of compromise, which, while being compatible with the current patent system, might at least control some of the current abuse, by simply making hoarding patents for the sake of hoarding less profitable.
  • I did read the patent, and I must say I'm a bit confused as to its intent. It appears that their actual claim has more to do with limiting the number of logged on users rather than trying to patent the fundamental idea of a graphical MUD.

    The whole thing still sounds a lot like Quake or EverQuest...

    --

  • After quickly scanning through the downloads on the following site, I believe that they may be examples of prior art.

    Prior Art? [orgwis.gmd.de]

    Pity there's no bounty for this at Bounty Quest yet.


  • Half of William Gibson's work probably invalidates the patent too.

    ~Cederic
  • Having skimmed the patent, one of the things they mention a lot is the system for only displaying a certain number of avatars on the screen, so that you never go above a predefined 'avatar count'. I don't believe that Quake had this, although I think it had most of the rest of the stuff.
  • "Prior art" means prior to the time the patent was filed. If they filed for the patent before those games came into existence, or before they began using their present architecture, then the patent is enforceable.

    mp

  • I'm fairly certain that the Pueblo MUD client was out by '96, as well. Pueblo had its own built-in VRML renderer. The MUD client (most from the MUSH, MUCK, etc. line) were hacked to send special messages to the client, giving it the URL of a VRML file to load, the URL of avatar objects, etc. You had to create scripts in the MUD's programming language to send update messages to the client, to let it know where in the VRML space the objects in the MUD's room were.

    It never really got off the ground, alas. It was only for Windows, and never quite caught on with either the players or the admins. I had played with it a bit on a MUSH I was an admin on. MUSH programming was ugly. MUSH programming to talk to a graphical client was brain damaging.

    The company that made Pueblo (Chaco) still have their web site up (http://www.chaco.com/pueblo/ [chaco.com], although they later became LikeMinds, which later was absorbed into MacroMedia. The copyright dates on their site say 1995, and they had a Windows 3.1 version of the cleint(!) so it's a fair bet Pueblo was around before this patent application.

  • Back in my mudding days (circa 1992) there was at least one rudimentary graphical mud. The resolution was terrible, the objects blocky, the color limited, but depending on how the patent is read it would probably constitute prior art. 3d is, to some extent, in the eye of the beholder. Does hitting ctrl-r and ctrl-l to turn left and right and displaying a still of the same room count? Certainly 3d, if not as finely tuned as, say, a Doom or Quake interface, but where does one draw the line? 90 degrees between frames, or 0.00001 degree? Communications and chatting between characters was certainly a major part of the game.
  • Note the key phrase three-dimensional. In the literal language of patents, there is nothing three-dimensional about today's flat-monitored FPS games

    Um... not to quibble, but if this is really what they mean, then what is the POINT of the patent, since only a relatively miniscule few displays are capable of generating three-dimensional output. They *DO* definitely use three-dimensional modelling, which is how I would interpret the wording.

  • ... is this patent about ? They talk about a videogame controlled by local controller and also remotely.

    This thing is so vague and general, it could apply to most online games !!!

    Who the hell is working at the patent office ?!?!
  • Where did he say, you can't "chat" in Quake ?

    He's mentioning this because there are additional methods of interaction in these games, specially, when chatting is not their main function.
  • I think that this is the same company. Worlds Chat was probably the name. I thought it was neat unless you took it beyond the proof-of-concept stage. But then, look at Everquest. Graphical chat with some things thrown in around for you to "do".
  • Umnh...


    How could anyone be certain what the courts will decide "3D" means? Did they happen to mention three spatail dimensions? Then color could count as a dimension. There are lots of dimensions in the world, and no reason not to include R X G X B as a 3D arena (aka RGB). Actually there is controversy as to whether it is 3D or 4D (CMYK), and Epson wants to add a couple of extra to give shinyness, and ?? (I don't have the right printer, so I haven't paid close attention.


    Still, as long as we are just talking about CRT's, there is RGB cross for a five dimensional aperture. Perhaps we'll just ignore things like flicker speed, but one shouldn't forget that we aren't talking about still life. So we need to add in time. That gives us a 6D CRT screen.


    Who can tell what the courts will decide that 3D means?



    Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
  • I can imagine that this would apply more to things like everquest, etc...I remember using WorldsChat a long time ago; it was nifty k33n :)
    Fighting the War on the War on Drugs.
  • The book Snow Crash by Neil Stephenson describes the 'metaverse'.. It was released in 1992 - and desccribes the _exact_ thing the patent describes.

    The metaverse is a highly scalable architecture for three dimensional graphical, multi-user. interactive virtual world system. {blabla] The virtual world shows avatars (yes, the book uses avatars too) representing the other users [..]

    In short, the entire patent is a ripoff of Neil Stephensons book Snow Crash.

    Its a bogus patent. ;)


    --
  • Of course there is always Neuromancer, and Snowcrash (where they are in fact called avatars.)

    And in the notes at the end of Snowcrash, Stephenson mentions a BBS system from the freaking Comodore 64 which had avatars.

    Methinks that prior art is going to abound.

    -jon

  • Well, openverse (http://openverse.org) has been around a few years, and was originally named metaverse, obviously a snowcrash referance. We had to change it though because somebody has a trademark on the name metaverse. This patent doesnt apply to OV i guess beacuse OV is 2d and not 3d...

    _joshua_
  • I can remember an "60 Minutes" episode back in the late 70's about a group that was getting patents on small chunks of code. Simple thinks like loops which counted. As has already been pointed out years ago, either IBM or MS has a patent on electronic journals/magazines. This past year, I have watched three of my software ideas get shot down by newly established patents. None of the ideas were earth shattering. Fact is all involved using current technology and software. But company X got a patent for using program types A, B, C, and D together as a package.It is possible to write a program from scratch and not be able to distribute it because the concept is patented. So are all the car manufacturers pay Mr. Car for the use of his initial concept?

  • Was it in 3D? "Habitat" is one early implementation of a virtual world, although in 2D. I'm not sure when it was first launched, but it was somewhere around 1985/6 I'll wager.

    Everyone interested in virual worlds know about it. Those of you who do not, search the web for papers by F. Randall Farmer [google.com], some of which you'll find here [ibiblio.org], the most famous of which is The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat [unc.edu].

    Recommended reading.

  • Well, I looked it up and according the The Lessons paper they started working on Habitat in 1985. So it's early. It used a client/server (OOP/message) model, they talk about avatars and they note, on the topic of the future that:

    There are several directions in which this work can be extended. Most obvious is to implement the system on more advanced hardware, enabling a more sophisticated display.

    (For those wondering, the original on-line Habitat client was C64 based and looked somewhat like the early Lucasgames graphical adventures, like Maniac Mansion. How I love those games...)

  • What about wolfenstien 3d? ;)

  • But if you are awarded a patent on something that has prior art (or known use in the industry) don't companies usually NOT say that there may be prior art? I doubt that this could be used for Quake like games - in fact the whole things seems silly to me. Anyone with real legal know-how on this one?
  • I'm not sure that this patent can be stretched to apply to 3D games - however, as they are planning to "review sites using their technology," I get the distinct impression they're doing this as a way to generate $$$ with the old "pay-us-you're-using-our-idea" routine.

    I've seen assorted 3D interactive environments, both chat and game. Indeed, some 3D games have chat in them. The concept itself is something that has been done in a variety of ways and discussed in even more ways. I can't see it holding up in court.

    However, some people prefer to pay fees then face court. So let's keep watching.

    If we're lucky, the sheer stupidity of this patent will be a useful tool against patent-mania.

  • standard "oh shit" tactics (Score:3)

    by ywwg ( 20925 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @12:25PM (#265442) Homepage
    This company released its first products a long time ago, like 1996-97. Why are they only getting a patent now?

    "will also review other 3D sites who may be using [their] technology to ensure [they] are fully compensated"

    Aha! This is quite clearly, at least to me, a stab in the dark at getting money. See, their current business model isn't working, and they aren't getting any money. So they figure, "If I can't get money legitimately, I'll sue people!" So they go around claiming that everyone owes them money. This is the last gasp of a dying company, I think.

    I'll make a bet: if this ploy fails, they will go on fuckedcompany.com very soon after.
  • Why would you want to patent something narrow?

    You can tie your opponants up in court for a while , while they have to try and prove why they aren't infringing on your patent.

    If your opponant has a patent that you want to "infringe" upon, you can offer to cross licence eachother.

    Vanity. (I am probably guilty of this one myself)

    I am sure that there are other good reasons that I haven't thought of but these three are a start.
  • "Can you claim fiction as prior art?"

    Maybe. I know that if one discloses the idea of ones patent, even at something as trivial as a cocktail party, you have only one year to file the patent from that point. If you publish the idea in a scholarly article I think you don't even get the one year.

    I think it would be a hard sell, claiming a work of fiction as prior art, otherwise Star Trek would invalidate many many patents. (Such as automatic doors which slide open etc.)

  • You have a year from the date of first disclosure to patent your invention. Disclosure ranges from offering to sell the invention or a product containing the invention to mentioning it to someone at a cocktail party. (If your opponant could find that person to testify against you)

    Therefore, if soneone held art prior to 1996, their year is already up.

  • I believe the term 'go fuck yourself' would apply here.

  • "We will also review other 3D sites who may be using our technology to ensure we are fully compensated"

    They've just been awarded the patent, and are now planning to go after a 'plurality' of existing 3D sites that are supposedly already using "their" technology. In other words, he admits there are a number of other sites that have already been using such technologies for a while --- given that these other sites all developed their technology without literally stealing it from his company, isn't he basically admitting that their is prior art? "We just got this patent and now we're going to go after a bunch of people who actually independently developed these same techniques"

    There must be huge amount of prior art on this one (and yes, I have read the patent, and the techniques described in this patent are precisely my line of work). The techniques described are not only in existing games like Diablo2 (not sure about Quake3 as Quake3 doesn't attempt to cull visible avatars to a maximum amount as the patent describes - Quake3 will render all of them if all of them are in view), but have been in common use (precisely as described) in military simulations, including support in open standards like DIS/HLA. I believe the lithtech engine also does what the patent describes.

    -----

  • Didn't doom use this same architecture

    Not really, this lame patent specifically includes that the system cull visible avatars to a maximum number. This is an incredibly lame thing to try patent, but to my knowledge none of the ID line of games does this. Doom and Quake (versions 1 to 3) will always display *all* avatars that are in a clients view.

    Nonetheless, there is a LOT of prior art. Diablo II, for example, sounds to me like it fits the bill fairly well (although not strictly "3D" in the usual computer-graphics sense of the word). Games aside, a lot of existing military simulations use precisely the techniques described, and *are* "3D" (in the computer-graphics sense of the word). They are even based on open standards such as DIS/HLA. DIS has been around for years.

    -----

  • I didn't notice the filing date was so long ago. That makes it a little trickier.



    -----
  • Quake, first commercially published in August of 1996, does not predate the patent application by a year. Without passing upon the question whether or not the patent's claims read upon Quake, Quake may not be relevant in determining its validity.
  • It surely might, but I tend to doubt it.

    I got the August, 96 date from the date they stated as their first use in commerce from their trademark application. While it is possible that they might not have considered distribution of a public beta to be a use in commerce, I anticipate they would have used the earliest date plausible.

  • ... its more like a 3D version of IRC.

    Read the details of the patent.
  • This means that Worlds.com is going to pick up the tab from that big lawsuit [slashdot.org], right?
  • Erm. Yes. Posts which make nonobvious claims without backing them up deserve to be modded greatly.
    --
  • There's two sides to these stupid patents. There's the USPTO, which is issuing them, and the companies filing them. The reason they file them is that there's very little to lose by filing bogus patents. What kind of penalties would be effective at deterring companies from filing bogus patent applications?
    ------
  • I meant when patents are overturned in court, the judge should have the (option?) of seriously penalizing the party holding the patent, if it's frivolous or bogus.
    ------
  • I agree, I remember something like this capability being in Moraff's Revenge [moraff.com] which came out for 8086 machines running CGA graphics in the late 80's. It didn't use a seperate server, but if I recall correctly, you could get a monster's eye view of your party, though that might only have occurred while you were in the process of being eaten by the monster.

  • Yep - they were on the list, as was I. All of this stuff has been discussed in public forums.

  • Prior art abounds, I have tons... (Score:3)

    by kbonin ( 58917 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @12:46PM (#265469)
    I was the original lead programmer on EnterTelevision / CyberTalk / OnLive Technologies that did Traveler, I've done tons of similar projects before and after for various game companies (SSI, Bethesda, Accolade), and I still design highly scalable VR systems today for fun...

    Everything in that patent is already in the public domain, in the system as they describe it, predating their application. All claims can be invalidated.

    If anyone has _real_ need of prior art, I'd be happy to dig through my reference collection and make everything available. I've spent years collecting docs and papers for just this event.

    As a previous poster mentioned, this is the "new economy" business model. Patent office is now ran by patent sharks and incompetent examiners, so patent all you can and launch shakedown.
  • "This explaines why their stock is currently trading at 9 cents."

    awwww come on they're at 9.5 cents!
  • The idea of patents was to encourage innovation. If someone invents something he can patent it and make some money from the monopolisation of an idea. Thus even the backyard inventor should have a possibility to make some money and not get overrun by the superior marketing of some huge corporation.

    But with the patent system as it is today, especially the USPTO, it is quite the oposite. To patent something does cost more than the backyard inventor can afford and most of these patents don't ever make a buck, so only big firms can afford to take some shots in the dark until one of them hits. The patents are used for protecting business modells and to shut others out more than anything else, and the way they are used is as the threat of a lawsuit, noone but some big business can live through. So the backyard inventor, or a startup business is demotivated, often enough simply by the fact, that it's next to impossible to figure out, if something is already patented or in the process of becoming patented without a team of specialized lawyers. And in the end a patent is only worth as much, as the lawyers you're paying to defend it.

    So patents are stifling innovations because:
    - They protect business models, hence the protected business has no need of new inventions.
    - They favour big businesses who can afford the lawyers instead of startups which have much more motivation for inventing something.
    - They entangle the introductions of new products with a complicated process of tracking down patents which might be relevant
    - Especially the granting of overbroad patents to basic methods stifles progress on anything relying on those methods
    - Instead of creating more legal security for the inventor they create more insecurity, since the inventor might suddenly find himself in a lawsuit
    - Patents are used to suppress superior technologies if they compete with something creating more revenue
    - The time patents are valid is too long in relation to the fast paced development

    All of this seems so very obvious that this posting should probably be moderated redundant.
  • Yes, it's exactly like those games. However, I'm not so sure it's an invalid patent. I remember using worlds.com when it first showed up, and I remember that at that point in time, there was nothing like it. So it's quite possible that they came up with the idea first, and so why shouldn't they patent it? Just because something's widely used doesn't mean it can't be patented. At the time they filed (1996), this wasn't widely used at all.

    All that this type of enviroment being widely used means is that worlds.com had a great idea and sparked a lot of people to develop similar systems.

    -Todd

    ---
  • Keep a lid on it this long? Worlds.com has been around since about 1994 or so when they came out with their first 3d chat room stuff (which is basically what this patent is for). I remember using it back then, and it was a very cool idea. Not enough to hold my interest for very long, but a cool idea all the same. Fact of the matter is, they filed in 1996, which is actually after they debuted. The patent is just only getting awarded now. They were around long before EQ was. So while it is a patent on something that is *now* fairly commonplace, it wasn't at the time. It may actually stand, even agaist vigorous claims of prior art.

    Yes, there are a lot of stupid patents out there, and more are granted every day. But this one may actually be legit. Worlds.com implemented a great idea, and then when they saw it was kinda neat, applied for a patent on it. Now, whether or not sci-fi books that described a similar system qualify as prior art is another question. I'm not really sure that they would.

    -Todd

    ---
  • [insert IANA caveat here]

    Actually, this is a curious point. They tend to say "three dimensional, graphical space" or some such, which means the virtual area could be "3D", independant of the projection (which is generally on a 2D monitor).

    Also, even if someone interprets this to mean real, genuine, 3D interaction, bad news because if those "relatively miniscule" displays ever do catch on, they'll run up against this patent roadblock when they shouldn't. They shouldn't because this has already been done in 2D, and the extension to real 3D, when it becomes available, should fit the "obvious" clause of patent law.

    I'm sure people were messing with 3D Avatars for chat rooms some time ago, although I haven't found any in 10 minutes of sifting through archives that meets the Nov. 1996 requirement. It's out there, tho; I'll find it. Or someone else will.
  • Actually, wouldn't it be fun if someone actually did patent patents? No seriously, hear me out. Like the "Instant Post-Modern Paper" that's been running around for years, load it with enough important-sounding gobbledy gook that you can get it by a patent clerk....

    Hmmm.

    A System to Distribute and Protect Intellectual Property? Or maybe, maybe, A System to Validate Uniqueness and Protect Duplication? Or perhaps we should put the clerks in place, like, A Multi-User Intellectual Property Protection System. Heck, that sounds like SDMI.....

  • Earlier Example of 3D, Multi-user Chat (Score:3)

    by nellardo ( 68657 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @02:28PM (#265482) Homepage Journal
    Try Meyer, T., Blair, D., and Conner, D. B."WAXweb: Toward Dynamic MOO-based VRML", Proceedings VRML 95. [nellardo.com] It talks about adding VRML to a MOO, which covers the client-server topology, as well as 3D. The MOO itself provided all the chat you could want. Since the MOO could track when objects moved from room to room, and people were just objects, and the MOO could spit out VRML to correspond to objects, you had simple 3D avatars and such.

    The Worlds, Inc. people almost certainly knew about this, as Tom Meyer, one of the authors, was on the VRML Advisory Group, and I'm pretty certain someone from Worlds, Inc. was on the VAG, too. This was also at the first VRML conference, in 1995. And WAXweb was one of the very first (if not the first) sites to serve VRML over the World-Wide Web.

    And Stephenson's Snowcrash was all over the VRML community at that time. Everyone knew that what they wanted to do was implement the Black Sun - the bar where Hiro demonstrates his abilities as a "hacker." In fact, one of the VRML start-ups was called Black Sun.

    You can go back even farther to check out Lucas's Habitat system, back in the eighties. Actually, now that I think of it, I remember hearing at the time that Worlds was planning on patenting some of this stuff - my boss at the time was Andy van Dam, one of the leading lights of computer graphics, who scoffed at the prospect of Worlds patenting anything so obvious. Andy and Tom were both all over that stuff, as they were instrumental in establishing the VRML Consortium.

  • Someone should patent patents and then not give any more out.


    --

  • A Quarter Century of Innovation (Score:3)

    by Baldrson ( 78598 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @03:33PM (#265486) Homepage Journal
    As the author of the first 3D, first-person shooter multi-user game [geocities.com] I can tell you it is pretty dang silly to expect to see basic, far-reaching patents in this area. I mean, it was 1974 when I first devised that system, and it was pretty "obvious" at that time -- including chat system, limitation of visibility and alteration of rendering methods by distance and view, etc. All it really took was the vision to actually write a 3D game (a vision which had been around for a long time when I first put finger to keyboard), some programming skill and access to the PLATO system. In the quarter of a century since then, there has been so much work done in multiuser distributed 3D gaming (including Kevet Duncombe's [google.com] LAN-based microprocessor game hosting system which he built and demonstrated in the early 1980s, client-side rendering [geocities.com], etc.), that it is very hard to believe any broadly blocking patents are left in this arena that aren't of the "one click shopping" variety.
  • The patent was applied for in 1996.
  • Where I work we are supposed to keep engineering notebooks. When we come up with some idea that might be unique and patentable, we are supposed to have someone else in the company who understands the concept witness and date the notebook. My understanding is that this is to show when we came up with the idea in case we patent it and it gets challenged. If this is really how it works, then the actuall date the patent is filed or when Quake was released is less important then when they can prove they came up with the idea.
  • When did you use it, was it before Nov 1996? This patent took 4 1/2 years to get approved, so it may have been unique when they were developing it and writing up the patent.
  • I used a semi-3d irc type program many many years ago. I think it was on MSN. It was like a Star Trek chat room or something, anyway, you could select a body and walk around and talk to people. It was sorta neat.

    The idea sure isn't very novel as this type of thing has been written about in zillions of books etc., and has already been done.

    But whatever, the patent office seems to know what's best.

  • Silly (Score:2)

    by Puk ( 80503 )
    What's silly is that they actually are going to waste money trying to pursue this. Didn't doom use this same architecture (arguably not in 3d, but that's just an obvious extension). Or the plethora of doom clones? I know I was playing these before 1996. If I thought harder, I could probably even come up with WAY older 2d games which used the same basic architecture.

    Also note on the linked patents on that page -- someone was nice enough to patent video games [delphion.com] in the year 2000. w00t.

    -Puk
  • This patent would affect games like EverQuest. It seems that what really separates it from Quake is that their patent involves a scalable architecture.

    I am not sure when they actually designed this technology and began patenting it. Because it is specific to a 3D environment, the only example of prior art that I can think of would be EverQuest. AFAIK, all other similar items (EG muds.) were based in only two dimensions. Given the incredibly long development time of EverQuest, it seems rather likely that EQ is the only example of prior art that one will ever need. This of course, assumes that Worlds.com did not begin their development efforts before EverQuest was started, which means that they would have been working on this stuff at least five or six years ago. I doubt that they would have been able to do so and keep a lid on it this log while maintaining any useful influx of capital.

    In short, worlds.com is probably full of shit and needs to keep their lawyers in check.

  • Re:Is it just me... (Score:3)

    by kevinank ( 87560 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @12:32PM (#265496) Homepage

    Well... in this case Worlds has been around for quite a while, and no one else that I'm aware of had implemented anything like shared 3d VR over the internet back when they started it.

    Worlds chat was released in 1994, so it does follow Snowcrash by about two years. Can you claim fiction as prior art?

  • We keep hearing about these lame ass patents (ooh! I patented using GRAPHICS in a CLIENT/SERVER prgram! Aren't I special?) and I keep hoping that one of these ones that will affect the entire industry will get enforced by a judge, requiring EVERY company ever to pay royalties (And hopefully providing the straw that breaks the camel's back in the process) and after the initial story breaks we never hear anything else.

    Like that stupid BT hyperlink patent. Whatever happend with that? Or that guy's patent on date windowing for Y2K. He was going to start suing people for lots of money after Y2K wasn't he? We really need to start getting follow ups for these stories.

  • AOL: "We're reasonable people: the paperwork for your License to use Air Of Life[AOL](tm) technology will come through next week. We'll allow you to keep breathing, but there will be compensatory and actual damages of three times the normal license fee for the duration of the period during which you continue to use our patents without a proper license. The total will come to $3,246.95. Thank You for your business." LOL
  • I'd say that Quake (and all other FPS games) would fit the bill.

    Interacting isn't just talking. Shoving a rocket up your nose (Q3Arena) or a mortar round down your pants (Tribes2) is interacting. It's just not all that polite. :)

  • I read the claims. They are broad. And you have to remember that in order to infring a patent infringing a single claim or even a substantial portion of a single claim is enough. Basically it applies to all 3d enviroments matching claim 5. For some more info on patent law, specifically infringing on one, look here [mycounsel.com].
  • Doesn't matter. In a court of law only the exact wording of the claims and claims only(no descriptions, abstracts, pictures, etc..) determines whether you're infringing or not. And sometimes it is enough to infringe a substantial portion of a single claim to be in violation.

  • This may have been a perfectly valid thing to patent back in 1996. (At least more so then now.) But to just begin to enforce it now would simply be silly.

    If, in the time it takes to get your patent, other people come up with the same idea from scratch, You've defeated the purpose of Patents. They haven't stolen anything from you but you can still sue them. You've simply created a bizarre legal weapon.

    You have to be able to begin selling and licensing your new product ASAP after inventing it. Otherwise you're allowing other people to duplicate your effort. Duplication of effort is never a good thing and it is even worse if you're going to come along later and say that their duplicated effort is now worthless. If That happens now the Patent Holder is essentially stealing from everyone else!

    The patent office needs to find a way to turn around patents a lot faster. I suppose they this means they need a larger, better-trained staff. But it would be worth a few tax bucks.

    -Andy

  • Re:Read the patent (Score:3)

    by cworley ( 96911 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @07:27PM (#265515)
    I recieved this from a former employee desiring to remain anonymous:

    Johnathan Clark has hit the nail on the head (post #292). While Worlds' PR and legal departments may claim otherwise, the core of the patent is a way for the system to keep the frame rate up: draw only the N people closest to you. And the system did exactly what he expects. People blinked in and out of the scene as they entered or left the magical group of N. Remember, this was for a 3-D *chat* company. You were expected to find 1-2 interesting people, then park yourself in front of them while you typed back and forth. If you are only a couple of "feet" from them, there's little risk that they'll pop out of your screen graph. (And remember that this was back in 1995/1996; we wanted to support 200 people in a room with only a Pentium on the client box. It was a reasonable solution.)

    None of this would apply to an FPS like Quake because there are an order of magnitude fewer players in a given space, and you have to see *all* of them for the game to be playable.

    It may apply to games like Everquest, however, if they do some sort of N-closest culling scheme. (Sorry, never played them, so I can't say.) If they do distance based culling, then, well, how fine do you want your hairs split? I do remember seeing a very early (free? shareware?) 3-D networked FRPG back in 1996 that might help prove prior art, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was called.

    Claim 5 on the patent is a mish-mash of items. Some of them would never stand up to any challenge, being a mish-mash of MUD and FPS technology. (``[R]endering a 3-D view from a viewpoint of the location of the particular user''? Puh-leeze.) HOWEVER, note that the patent describes a system that goes up to *worlds* running on different servers an connecting to their own particular set of clients (see section (g)). This sounds a lot like Everquest or Diablo, and I don't know of any MUDs that scaled to that level.

    See post #120 for a bit more info.

  • Grin, well despite being attacked for it being '94 and earlier, I'm glad to know that I hadn't lost my mind. The program was "cool" even if not totally useful. I liked the idea... but I'd spend 5 minutes as a slow moving Avatar, log off the Internet, and dial into a local BBS... :)

    Neat idea, but the masses groked "channels" easier than people thought, at least once AOL started calling them chat rooms... :)

    Note to self: pick up a copy of AOL for a free month one of these days... figure out why the masses seam to like it...

    Note to others: if you are coding Open Source Stuff for end users, get copies of end user systems (Apple w/ MacOS 9, Apple w/ MacOS X, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, etc.) and see what people like. If you want to design for hackers, don't claim to be making things for the masses.

  • Their stuff was neat (Score:3)

    by alexhmit01 ( 104757 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @11:47AM (#265523)
    Either they bought the domain name, or this is the company that has been at this since '96/'97 (hard to tell, Slashdotted). They had cool Avatar chatting systems, etc.

    Their stuff was really neat and novel, and probably deserving of protection. They brought a cool concept out to the marketplace years before others, and in doing so helped legitamize it.

    You used to be able to go to Tucows and find a couple of chatting paradigms, and this one was really cutting edge back then.
  • I think that the assumption is that since the patent was filed in 1996 someone must show prior art before 1996.

    This of course is the flaw (one of at least) in the patent system. Two people can come up with a patentable idea at the at the same time, but it's the one who has the money to file the patent first gets it. It all really hinges on the definition of prior art as well. I believe that prior art has to be a public demonstration of the concept. Which is really fair for a company that worked ten years on a kick ass product only to have the rug pulled out from under them by another company patenting a lesser version of the same idea.

    Of course I don't know why I bother the whole patent idea is bogus. But it does irritate me that it's so expensive to get a patent. Instead of throwing money into welfare programs that encourage laziness (I know they don't all, but most do) let's throw tax money into research areas, such as reducing the cost of filing a patent (or removing the cost completely). Yeah, yeah I'd be just as mad when companies got their patents for free and there are tons of issues that would be involved in something like this (as I'm sure plenty of people will point out), but it could possibly help improve the patent system as well as make me feel alot better about where the my money (stolen by the government) is going.

  • This is exactly what games like Asheron's Call [asheronscall.com] and EverQuest are doing.

    This company isn't looking to patent chatting...it's staking out it's claim to all future MMORPG's. It's sad that one company can patent something that's so widely used.

    I'm going to patent breathing. Pay up.

    --

  • The game Furcadia [furcadia.com] also predates the 1996 date of the patent.
  • Or F. Randall Farmer. I'm thinking of posting this bit on a forum he frequents (MUD-Dev), and I'm sure he still has a bit of Habitat stuff around.
  • For some bizarre reason, apparently science fiction isn't treated as prior art.

    -Ian.
  • and we all know how because RAH described the waterbed in a book that they could not get a patent for it right? Snow Crash was published in 1992.
    Neal Stephenson to the rescue.

  • Re:No, you're wrong. (Score:4)

    by SnapShot ( 171582 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @01:19PM (#265559)

    Perhaps they are doing us all a great service. Since their patent applies to 3-D graphics and true 3-D graphics don't really exist (as an earlier poster pointed out), by the time real 3-D displays (holographic, I assume) exist this patent will have expired thus opening the realm of 3-D gaming to all without the threat of patent infingement!!! We should send them a thank you letter.

  • [SetRantMode=1]

    Who wants to bet that they get visited by a bunch of guys with nail guns?

    I mean, this is just a land grab to see what they can get away with. and they must be hoping that everyone is a sheeple.

    I want to go break some fingers at the patent office. Someone needs to patent the idea of a word processor and a spread sheet.

    This is starting to fall into the category of needing heavy weaponry as an attitude adjustment tool.

    [sigh]

    Check out the Vinny the Vampire [eplugz.com] comic strip

  • ZeroClick [ridiculopathy.com] is a marketing and e-commerce technology that allows consumers to purchase goods and services without actually clicking or indicating purchase approval in any way. Customers simply get the merchandise delivered to their doorstep with an invoice- the ultimate in convenience.

    [It has been reported that ZeroClick [ridiculopathy.com] partner Martha's Dildo Vineyard has been responsible for several domestic disturbances due to unexpected adult-oriented deliveries. We at ZeroClick [ridiculopathy.com] sincerely apologize for that.]

    I know that /. is very anti-patent these days. But I swear we only patented ZeroClick [ridiculopathy.com] technology to keep someone else from patenting it. Can you imagine what someone else might do with this incredible technology? [ridiculopathy.com]

    Sure, we've entered into licensing agreement with several e-mail marketing firms. [Just be careful- clicking "delete message" may actually obligate you to buy something].

    To find out more about ZeroClick [ridiculopathy.com] and our very affordable license plan, click HERE. [ridiculopathy.com]

  • Read the patent (Score:3)

    by DunkPonch ( 215121 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @11:45AM (#265592) Homepage
    Don't panic, folks. Read the actual patent first. It is pretty narrow in scope.

    It would take quite a stretch to make this affect Quake/Duke Nukem/et al.

    Nothing to worry about. Back to fragging.
  • Did I ever tell you I patented Collision Detection in video games?

    Actually, mine's pretty narrow in scope, too. It only applies if you get into an accident while playing video games while driving. If this were to happen, you would violate my patent, unless you are one of the 2 people who bought me a donut 7 years ago.

    --

  • ....wherein the step of limiting is a step of determining which avatars are closest in the graphical space to the local avatar.

    The patent uses the word "avatar" over 30 times to describe a person's representation in a 3-D environment. Funny, Stephenson called them that in SnowCrash. Wait, he basically described the thing being patented. Oops.
  • You're right, but this illustrates the problem with the USPTO today - they can't keep up. By the time a patent is granted, 100 other people have idependently created the same technology, and now they're screwed because the stealth patent beats them up.

    On the other hand, I think it's pretty clear there is a tremendous amount of "prior art" ie pre-1996 here, so there seems to be no ground for a patent either way.
  • The patent [delphion.com] you mentioned above is interesting. But, didn't Sega try this and fail? (Anyone remember Sega Channel where you could pay a fee to play Sega games over your cable lines? Yeah the patent specifies modem.)

    Also, how long have you been able to play Xbased solitarie with XDMCP? :)

    I'm just skimming this one, but it is kinda funny. Maybe it has some merit, but it looks like someone could come up with some prior art. IE, we're doing this with diskless terminals. They've just adapted the technology for home entertainment devices. Perhaps they think by staying with video games that they can escape those.

    Such is the way of patents. This current one doesn't sound too original. Dig back, you hit FPS games, and UO can be more chat that game. 3D is just a natural evoultion from the 2D worlds laid down by Doom and others. ImagiNation had a avatar based chat, and the idea has been around much longer than the patent.

    Tothe casual slashdot reader this patent seems like an easy one to blow away, but if they have a patent and are willing to look at other sites you can bet they've looked at similar works and have worded their patent to thread through every loophole they could find. Their description may be different from anything else out there. (language really sucks. Lets make everyone write patents in latin! Then they'll really have to think about what they're writing.) Just listen to George Carlin for good examples of language use. ie: Flight attendedt: Get on the plane, get on the plane. Carlin: *$^# you, I'm getting IN the plane. There seems to be less wind in here. Let Evil Kenivel get ON the plane. Language is often what get's these patents approved.

    Think about it a bit longer. It's not in their best interests to go after id, Monilith, etc. A dot com vs. an established and successful game developer (or mutiple developers?) Please. They would have to go after Nintendo as well (How about glove ball? It's kinda 3d, and the hand is kinda an avatar...) No, they're going to stick to going after other dotcoms, but I can't see how that will be any more profitable than taking Nintendo, id, etc. to court.
  • Let's disregard the fact that they have only recently been awarded the patent, and applied for it Nov 12, 1996, shall we? I know those pesky facts can get in the way sometimes....
  • There is also a massive amount of prior art in the VRML standard. The VRML mailing list had extensive discussions on the issues between 1994 and 1996. The alleged inventors were probablyon the list.

    Another interesting source that may well invalidate the claim is Niel Stephenson's 'Snowcrash'. We can probably prove that the alleged inventors read the book.

    I vote for the private perjury prosecution against the persons listed as inventors and the assignees.

  • I have to say that many people on /. are quick to jump on the anti-patent bagwagon. What you have to realize is that it's necessary in the business world. Often patents are used just to solidify positions when attempting financing, etc

    I have to say that many people on /. are quick to jump on the anti-crack cocaine bagwagon. What you have to realize is that it's necessary in the business world. Often profits from crack cocaine are used just to solidify positions when attempting financing, etc.

    There is no excuse for committing perjury and civil fraud which is what a frivolous patent application is.

    As a VC I would not be impressed by a business plan that amounted to no more than exploiting a frivolous patent. Filling a defensive patent to prevent someone else from filling is a different matter entirely. However the problem with those applications is that they are used to justify the USPTO scheme since they measure the 'success' of the system by the number of patents filled.

    It is no surprise that most people on slashdot have a dim view of patents in general. The utter incompetence of the USPTO means that even genuine patents are hard to enforce. The typical response to a patent claim is for the corporation concerned to flip the bird at the owner. Most patents issued in the Internet space are completely bogus and border on outright fraud. So why take much notice of the constant stream of demands for payment?

  • Anyone remember the 3D tank maze game that used to be run on the CYBER cluser at Manchester University?

    It must be at least 25 years old but I am pretty sure it represents prior art for the patent.

    The patent is probably invalid in any case on account of vagueness. 3D multiplayer games have been arround for many years. The ability to render complex scenes in 3D from unconstrained viewpoints is new but that has nothing to do with the scope of the invention claimed.

    The technique of dropping items from a display to reduce processing costs has been used in 3D for at least 30 years.

  • I remember one case in which the Old Testament was used as prior art. It was a case involving use of urea as a cleaning agent in a dye process. Turns out that it is referenced in the Book of Armaments or some such.

    The application being in the UK the prior art was brought to the examiners notice during the one year review period and the application struck out accordingly.

  • I worked for Worlds from 95-97, mainly as an artist on the WorldsChat project [scamper.com] (long live the penguin avatar!). All hands except for a skeleton crew were laid off in '97. The Worlds that exists today is indeed the same company, albeit evolved into something quite different. There was a tremendous amount of excitement about online chat back then, but then the same thing happened with 3D chat companies that happened with the .coms a few years after.

    My nerdy WorldsChat art scrapbook [scamper.com]

  • I would make a joke here having to do with patenting stupid comments about patenting patents, but even that joke has been made so many times that its not funny anymore.

    Maybe I should make a comment about patenting comments relating to patenting stupid comments about patenting patents.

    No, I know, I'll make a comment about copyrighting comments about patenting stupid comments about patenting patents! Then I'll trademark making comments having to do with copyrighting comments relating to patenting stupid comments about patenting patents!

    Awww, fsck it.

  • Re:Read the patent (Score:4)

    by CKW ( 409971 ) on Wednesday April 25, 2001 @01:31PM (#265644) Journal

    Not only that, but they're burning $10 million dollars [worlds.com] a year. They might not be around very long.

    I especially like this sentence from their April 17 2001 10KSB SEC form [yahoo.com]:

    "Our auditors have expressed doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern."

    Bwahahahahahahaaaa!

    This explaines why their stock is currently trading at 9 cents [yahoo.com].

    Of course all this raises the spectre of someone else buying their 'IP' and persuing everyone under the sun, shaking them down for the 'cheap settlements out of court'...

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