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Patents Entertainment Games

3D Games Patent Threatens Industry? 76

Posted by Zonk from the i-don't-think-this-is-going-to-fly dept.
Castar writes "Recently Advanced Video Graphics (AVG) sued several game publishers for infringing on their patent on "Method and Apparatus for Spherical Panning". Since this affects almost every 3D video game, the International Game Developers Association sent out a call for prior art in their monthly newsletter. An industry lawyer has also done an overview of the issue here. I would think lots of CAD software produced before 1983 would invalidate the patent."
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3D Games Patent Threatens Industry? More

3D Games Patent Threatens Industry?

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  • Remember when... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by czarangelus ( 805501 ) <iapetus.gmail@com> on Saturday March 26, 2005 @01:14PM (#12054826)
    Remember back when patents were used to stimulate researchg and development, rather than to emasculate it?

    Neither do I, I'm only 22.
    • Am I the only one who sees the need for patent reform? If such a thing was to come and change the patent system (I hope to GOD so in the near future), I think that patent reform should include diasllowing patents on things thant ANYBODY can do with ease, or generic items.

      • Re:Patents are really out of hand. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by shaitand ( 626655 ) on Saturday March 26, 2005 @01:38PM (#12054926) Journal
        I think that patents should require a working physical invention be sent to he patent office again.

        To fix the warehousing problem they simply do not keep the inventions, instead they keep a series of digital images on each device that can be reviewed later.

        Damn, too bad you couldn't patent software anymore if you had to send a physical invention eh?
        • Damn, too bad you couldn't patent software anymore if you had to send a physical invention eh?

          Wouldn't a working program using the patent concept do? I bet a sourcecode or pseudocode would occupy less than an image...
        • At least they should be handled similar to trademarks. If a patent is not actively used by either production, research, or at the very least by notifying well known users about the patent, it should be invalidated.

          Where is the stimulation, if it slumbers in some folder?

          I'm not suggesting that companies have to employ some patent police, which vigorously searches for patent infringements throughout the planet. But if a company sues another for the use of a patented technique some decades after they have pu
        • Software patents would be brought into that system via essentially the same loophole by which they were brought into the current system. Everyone would send cheap PCs with the "innovative" software loaded on them. Exactly as they do now, patents would cover "the enclosed device, which consists of a central processing unit, one or more input and output devices, and a fucking plurality (God I hate that word!) of memory storage cells onto which are loaded data which can cause the device to..."

          Actually, it w

          • PC # 1 - Innovative
            PC # 2 - Sorry PC #1 was already patented.

            But but, pc # 2 is running different software.

            Oops, sorry, can't beat it with a hammer must be intangible. Maybe you should try the copyright office.

            "Actually, it would probably be worse than present, because given the intelligence the patent office has shown so far, they'd probably take a few photos of the motherboard, and not even bother to save a hard disk image, much less think to ask for a description of how the software does what it does.
        • It shouldn't require a physical invention, as the person who develops the idea may not have the funding to create it themself, but it should require a 'blueprint' that can be demonstrated to work when produced (source code would fall in this category).

          And nothing that uses a different apparatus to achieve the same effect can constitute patent infringement.

          That would be a sane patent system. I have NO idea how the one we have now works, except that the one we have now doesn't work.
          • Ah but ideas, concepts, and software are not things that have a legitimate place in patent law.

            Ideas of course simply are not property and concepts are just ideas. Software falls under copyright and therefore the only thing you could try to patent in the realm of software would be ideas and concepts which are not valid patentable material. I am not advising a new system here, I was refering to the system that was originally in place.

            The reason it was changed was NOT to allow the patenting of ideas and co
      • Good luck in the Republican dominated government. I thought Republicans were for smaller government? Guess that was just a "sales technique" to get them in office. Kind of like term limits.
    • Patents are good for a maximum of 20 years right?

      Can someone here can ask for royalties for the toaster?

    • Re:Remember when... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 )
      I've often wondered when this would come up.

      Pretty much all of the game companies I've worked for have patented something. A lot of these were looked upon as either "We're going to be terribly rich" in the heat of the moment, then ignored later on, or are just kept around in case someone else starts a patent war. And, of course, nobody knows about it, and everyone does it, because who would think someone would have a patent on a character playing silly sound effects when you click on it repeatedly?

      And t
      • Don't worry, I'm sure things will change after someone sues Scottish rock phenomenon Franz Ferdinand for subliminally copying one of their songs, and then F.F.'s record label counters with some patents, and the whole byzantine system of corporate legal alliances comes tumbling down in The Patent War to End All Patent Wars.
  • is the world ending?

    3d games not allowed?

    what about open source 3d development tools?

    graphical artists, 3d imagrey for movies to make them look cool?

    Someone call PIXAR, those increadables can save us good.

    • Re:What is going on?b (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      You know when you have a 3D model displayed in a game, and you can pan around it and zoom in on it?

      That's patented.

      This is usually done in character select screens. You'll select a character, and a 3-D model will be displayed. You can then use this patent to move around it and view it from various angles and zoom in on it.

      I can't speak to the merits of that patent, but it many, many video games definitely violate it.

    • Re:What is going on?b (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Doug-W ( 165055 )
      Unless I'm missreading this, isn't this patent about to expire?

      United States Patent 4,734,690
      Waller March 29, 1988

      If it was granted 3/29/88 and is 17 years in length, one could write code based on it starting Weds and not need to worry. I guess that's why they're filing suit now, been waiting for the maximum number of violations.

  • Front page this mofo (Score:2, Informative)

    by UlfGabe ( 846629 )
    Defendants are Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Activision, Atari, THQ, Vivendi Universal, Sega of America, Square Enix, Tecmo, LucasArts, and Namco Hometek. Several of these defendants have joined together to mount a common (and very costly) defense.

    well we can deal without EA, i hope the others are leaving them in the cold.
  • Now SNK and Capcom can return to dominate the market. I bet those two had a hand in this with their secret society of fighting game developers.
  • Yes, that patent's mine. Now behold the satanic fumes, rising from planet Earth !~ Muahahahhaha

  • Movie 'Tron' (Score:4, Informative)

    by El_Muerte_TDS ( 592157 ) on Saturday March 26, 2005 @01:34PM (#12054907) Homepage
    The movie Tron released in 1982 contains a shit load of 3D rendered stuff. They used existing products to render the 3D things, these products where commonly used to design technical things.

    One of the companies involved was MAGI Synthavision: http://accad.osu.edu/~waynec/history/tree/magi.htm l

    Does that qualify as prior art?

  • Not exactly a dupe, but... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Pluvius ( 734915 ) <pluvius3NO@SPAMgmail.com> on Saturday March 26, 2005 @01:35PM (#12054912) Journal
    Should've still been linked [slashdot.org] in the blurb.

    Rob
  • SGI hopefully has some prior art for this. There has to be others as well in the 3d industry who could kick this.
  • And remember that, in most jurisdictions, you are violating this patent by just playing a 3D game, so if you carry on playing these sort of game you are a criminal.
    • >carry on playing these sort of game you are a criminal.

      cool, I always wanted to be a criminal but didn't know where to start.

      >>>Pancake!

  • A solution to stupid patents (Score:5, Funny)

    by Henry V .009 ( 518000 ) on Saturday March 26, 2005 @02:28PM (#12055291) Journal
    My solution is to start making the government pay damages when it grants a stupid and economically damaging patent. It could pay for said damages by with a special tax on patent lawyers.

  • I researched this very point for a client (Score:4, Informative)

    by MarkusQ ( 450076 ) on Saturday March 26, 2005 @03:00PM (#12055548) Journal

    A few years back I researched this very point for a client (I'm a programmer/math guy, not a laywer). We came up with prior art dating back to the 1800s (the very same technique was used in painting for "perspective lanterns" or some such). We turned over what we'd come up with to the lawyers, they wrote a letter, and we never heard from them again.

    --MarkusQ

    • That's fantastic, but posting this on Slashdot does absolutely nothing. You should submit your information tot he appropriate people.

  • Way back in the day when I was in University, I seem to remember learning how to perform projections of 3-d stuff onto a plane.

    I believe we used it in both Linear Algebra and in calculus.

    Have they, effectively, patented the underlying mathematics that define such thing? That would be absurd.

    The amount of prior art alone is staggering, let alone the entire branch of mathematics which gave it to us in the first place.
  • Retroactively chasing patents has been proven to not work. I doubt the 3D games industry will be challenged by this

    Google for "acacia", they tried claiming a patent on streaming video and eventually failed, in a judges ruling which basically said that patent chasing can not be done.

    Hopefully these moneygrabbers will be shot down ASAP
  • From the patent:
    2. The method of claim 1 where the step of moving the viewing space includes the step of orienting said viewing space with respect to the object, by varying at least one of pitch, yaw, and roll attitudes of said viewing space.

    Whew! I'm glad I use quaternions in my code. No gimball lock there.

    • Hehe quaternions :-)

      But be careful not to allow "panning", since then you violate claim 1 of the patent. Basically you can have quaternions just allow you to have a sitting duck in 3D.
    • Doesn't every movie do this? It is a natural evolution of an existing idea, and as such would be thrown out. It's like saying that after the invention of the wheel that using two of them together couldn't be done due to a patent.

  • What bothers me, perhaps the most, is that this is just one of the many examples where mathematics is applied to make an existing idea that much more compelling. The idea that concepts from mathematics can be ingrained into someone's private money-making scheme seems both non-sensical on the one-hand and a complete affront to science on the other. How can we as a society allow a mathematical transformation (which is a provable FACT) to become someone's private property?

    We live in a day where the very nebul
  • Looking at the patent, it was filed in 1987 and granted in 1988.

    Obviously, my patent on "deriving patent age by subtracting current year from patent year" is preventing people from realizing that this patent is expired. Sorry guys.

  • 29 Mar 1988 + 17 years = 29 Mar 2005

    The patent expires on Tuesday.

  • Flight Simulator for the Apple II and TRS-80 came out in 1980.

    http://fshistory.simflightcom/fsh/index.htm [simflight.com] (pops).

    Battlezone was in the arcades in 1980.

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