EFF Attacks Online Gaming Patent

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The EFF is attacking more bogus patents. This time they're going after the 'method and system of playing games on a network' which covers tournament ladders, online rankings and advertisements. The patent in question has already been asserted against a number of small companies who know that licensing it is cheaper than litigating. Ars Technica's coverage mentions that Netrek looks like a good source of prior art. 'Netrek, an online multiplayer game with origins in the mid 1980s, makes use of much of the same technology described in Goldberg's patent. Much of the code for Netrek is open source, and its development is archived online; the source code was first posted to Usenet in late 1989. The EFF has also documented other instances of prior art with the assistance of students at the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.'"

Prior art?

[Anonymous Coward]

There was top-down, space themed, multiplayer game on Athena (MIT) in the late 1980's that had Asteroid-like graphics. Anyone remember it?

Also does anyone remember a tile game (around the same time) with a train and tracks called "Software Engineer".

Prior art is sometimes everywhere.

Re:How exactly was this innovative?

[IBBoard]

It sets out a broad, nebulous set of rules that could be interpreted to be any number of things.

Congratulations, I think you have just discovered what is known as "a legal document" of the sub-species "patent". Part of the reason that the grammar is so bad (to normal eyes) and wordy is so that they can make it mean everything (to scare people off) and something very specific (when they're litigating against someone and want to pick a specific point by picking a specific interpretation).

If only the EFF didn't have to waste its money on this kind of thing.

1989? (you must be new around here) - try 1977

[Steve Hosgood]

Essex university's MUD (circa 1977) would show that at least all the concepts of playing multi-player games on computer networks goes back quite a long way further than merely 1989. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-User_Dungeon [wikipedia.org] for starters.

Re:net wreck?

[Datamonstar]

Did you even go there? If you did, I'd have thought the naming convention and it's reasons would be fairly obviously, even if you didn't stumble upon the reason why the 1extra "T" was omitted.

Re:Prior art?

[mapsjanhere]

A patent examiner has typically 8 h of time to examine an application. So the applicant is supposed to help with the process by listing all applicable prior art and related patents - what is the basis of trying get patents overturned for having missed something relevant. But the patent examiner has to take a lot of what is presented to him as factual, or he'd never get anywhere. And so you get patents issued that should have never been granted in an ideal process, where the examiner is an expert in the field, and where the prior art is obvious (and not hidden in some 80's area source code).

4-5 hours ( in a 40 hour week)

[tinkerghost]

These guys are supposed to review 4 new patents & 5 backlogged patent applications every week. Half the time it takes me 4 hours to figure out what the hell these lawyers are obscuring, let alone start looking for prior art. As for the guy above who said they need better experts, these are usually guys out of college - often lawyers waiting to pass the bar. For the most part they have no experience in the field that the patent is in. Hence what is novel to them is quite frequently common sense to people in the field. To present an example, the moron who managed to get a triple linked list patented. How traversing a list in 3 modes using object references is novel when traversing in 1 & 2 modes using object references is standard 1st year programming I don't know.