Multiple game publishers sued over 3D patent. [Archive] - Indiegamer Developer Discussion Boards

Jason Chong

11-01-2004, 11:15 PM

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=8236&section=feature&email=

"Exclusive: Multi-Publisher Legal War Looms Over 3-D Patent
A patent infringement case for the patent, "Method and Apparatus for Spherical Planning," is now pending. The case could have enormous implications and could affect nearly every 3-D video game ever made. Put on your 3-D glasses and read all about it...

GameDAILY BIZ received word recently that Texas-based law firm McKool Smith has sued 12 major game publishers and is threatening legal action against several smaller companies as well. Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft, Activision, Atari, THQ, Vivendi Universal Games, Sega, Square Enix, Tecmo, LucasArts, and Namco Hometek are all named as defendants in the case."

What's your take on this guys ? :-)

andyb

11-02-2004, 01:02 AM

The world's gone mad! Every lawyer and his dog wants to sue someone for some ridiculous patent these days. I was going to say it makes me glad I live in the UK, but things are nearly as bad over here anyway :(

SunAndGames

11-02-2004, 01:41 AM

I did a quick google on McKool Smith, which led to a link for some company called MyMail (http://www.mymail.com). They look like a totally fabricated company that exists solely for the purpose of patent litigation. These guys are using the same law firm, but are going after ISP's. Their about (http://www.mymail.com/about.htm) page would be hilarious if it weren't for that fact that they're actually wasting real peoples time and money with this crap. I'm suprised they don't claim invention of the internet as one of their products.

Andy

11-02-2004, 01:46 AM

Got now why Mike moved into 2D... :D

Saying seriously I hardly believe I can help EA with this case. So, there is nothing more for me to worry about.

PS: There is probably the mistake in press release. It should sound as - "several smaller companies as well: Electronic Arts, Take-Two Interactive, Ubisoft..." ;)

Well. OK. Back to work.

Dom

11-02-2004, 02:05 AM

2 points:

1) they really didn't want to name EA - theres noone in his field I can think of (except maybe MS themselves) who has deeper pockets for lawyers to blow this out of the water

2) The patent is nonsense. Not only does it rely on public info in the patent (algorithms from Foley & Van Damm) but there is obvious prior art. Elite was released in 1984, and this patent is filed in 1987. Kapow!!!

Nuff said.

Chaster

11-02-2004, 06:42 AM

merovingian

11-02-2004, 07:12 AM

LOL! They are suing EA? E..A...!?!?! Hope they've got BILLIONS backing them, 'cause EA's lawyers are gonna have them for LUNCH! LOL!!!!

Laugh all you want, these guys are for real. The merits of this patent are specious at best, but when has common sense ever prevailed in this country? There's plenty of prior art out there, dating back to frickin' Leonhard Euler. Now try to explain that to a court of law.

And of course, the EFF is nowhere to be seen unless it's ultimately about protecting the rights of software pirates.

www.mckoolsmith.com is quite a busy beaver these days...

PS Don't put your faith in EA to save the day - they may very well settle out of court to get universal usage of the patent and extend it to their 3rd parties as a way of simply making this go away.

3D, we hardly knew ye...

Coyote

11-02-2004, 07:18 AM

Okay, I wasted a few minutes reading over this patent.

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=4734690.WKU.&OS=PN/4734690&RS=PN/4734690

Based on my reading of it, and depending upon how it's interpreted, this is actually a really quirky technique for doing 3D rendering - based on spherical coordinates around an object. I don't know of ANY games that use this technique.

My guess? Somebody bought the patent from Waller / Tektronics (or whoever the current patent owner was) which was otherwise about to die a natural death in hopes of 'going fishing' with it (sort of like fishing with dynamite). He's flinging wet speghetti strands in random directions trying to see if anything manages to stick, and he's forcing a lot of people to spend money to prove that they never infringed.

My opinion: I don't think this patent should have been issued in the first place, but that's besides the point. The fact that this turkey can go practice reckless litigation like this is a clear example of how not just the US patent system but the US court system is subject to levels of abuse that threatens to cripple our economy.

Our system is supposed to protect the small inventor, and allow him to take on the "big guns." Instead, we see the big guys are now the only ones who can afford to file patents (and some have entire business arms devoted to generating patents), or we see jokers like this who simply buy up patents and use them to go on indiscriminate shooting sprees.

Jim Buck

11-02-2004, 07:40 AM

What is really unbelievable about this is that, without reverse-engineering a game, there is no way this company can prove that the game uses this technique of rendering. (And it would take some SERIOUS effort of reverse-engineering.) But I guess it's up to the other guys to prove that it's *they* that aren't using this technique?? What happened to innocent before proven guilty?? I think it's up to the suing company to somehow prove that a game is using this technique without infringing on the game's license which usually says something about not reverse-engineering (right??).

Bluecat

11-02-2004, 07:49 AM

All the 'patent holder' has to do, is when they initiate the lawsuit put in a request for discovery. This is what SCO did to IBM in their infamous lawsuit. If the judge agrees, the target has to turn over all the source code to the patent holder for examination. Of course all this costs the target company money in legal fees and lost time, so they may just settle with the patent holder instead.

There really needs to be a mechanism where the target company can countersue for damages if the lawsuit proves to be unfounded. Triple damages would be even better!

Greg Squire

11-02-2004, 08:33 AM

My opinion is that this isn’t going to go anywhere. It sounds like some evil sharks are out “fishing” again. They are going after people with money (as that’s all they’re after), but the problem with that is those people are also the ones that can afford the lawyers to prove what nonsense this is.

The world would be a better place without software patents in my mind. They do little to protect a product (as intended). They are more often used as a reason to go pick a fight with someone and abuse the legal system. In general I think they hurt more than help. I hear of too many software patents that should have never been issued in the first place. I don’t think most of the guys at the patent office even understand software or the ramifications of what they are doing. Too often prior art seems to have been blatantly ignored. Unfortunately software patents are probably here to stay, there’s just been too many created already.

Just wait and someone will patent the FOR loop, and we’ll all be in trouble. It’s bound to happen someday with the level of competence at the patent office. :D

Coyote

11-02-2004, 08:41 AM

There really needs to be a mechanism where the target company can countersue for damages if the lawsuit proves to be unfounded. Triple damages would be even better!

That would scare me even worse, unless it was seriously capped, because all a big company has to do to steamroller a little guy who is legitimately protecting his interests is run up their legal costs, raising the stakes until he folds.

But we do need SOME kind of safety mechanism put in place to prevent this kind of abuse. Something like a charge of 5% to 10% of the suit value if the case is dismissed as being frivolous or without merit (or abusive of the system). That would help keep lawsuits from going too wild.

I think Greg Squire is right - the bigger problem we're facing today is big companies like EA, Microsoft, etc. filing a bazillion patents for every idea that crosses their employees' minds, whether original or not. They are then using these as ammunition to attack anybody who dares compete with them. It's deplorable, but it's currently WORKING, so everyone who can afford to do it (read: mainly multimillion/billion dollar corporations) is filing patents as fast as they can.

Bluecat

11-02-2004, 09:04 AM

That would scare me even worse, unless it was seriously capped, because all a big company has to do to steamroller a little guy who is legitimately protecting his interests is run up their legal costs, raising the stakes until he folds.

But the little guy would then countersue the big guy and get back triple the damages that the big guy caused. Three times the court costs. Three times the loss of income. Instant millionaire. I'd think that would be a deterrent.

But we do need SOME kind of safety mechanism put in place to prevent this kind of abuse. Something like a charge of 5% to 10% of the suit value if the case is dismissed as being frivolous or without merit (or abusive of the system). That would help keep lawsuits from going too wild.

Try 50% and I'd think that would be more of a deterrent. :)

I think Greg Squire is right - the bigger problem we're facing today is big companies like EA, Microsoft, etc. filing a bazillion patents for every idea that crosses their employees' minds, whether original or not. They are then using these as ammunition to attack anybody who dares compete with them. It's deplorable, but it's currently WORKING, so everyone who can afford to do it (read: mainly multimillion/billion dollar corporations) is filing patents as fast as they can.

The big problem is software patents in general.

My understanding that the criteria for granting a patent has always been that it should be novel, and it should not be obvious. There's something else but I can't remember it at the moment. It seems to me that most of the patents being granted at the moment, both in software and biotech, fail those two conditions. This 3D patent for example fails the novel aspect in that 3D has been around for years before this was filed, and I suspect it fails the non-obvious condition as well. It's pretty clear the patent officers don't have a clue when it comes to software, or are so overloaded that they don't have time to perform the proper due diligence. The fact that the PTO is funded by the patents it grants is also an issue. The more patents it grants, regardless of their validity, the richer it gets.

I'm not against patents in general. They do tend to protect the small inventor from exploitation. But I don't consider software to be an invention, and I don't consider it to be valid to be patented. Unfortunately, the government doesn't see it this way and continues to grant software patents that hurt the industry.

GBGames

11-02-2004, 09:30 AM

I'm not against patents in general. They do tend to protect the small inventor from exploitation.

But in the case of software patents, I would love to see an example of a small inventor winning a case against someone bigger. IBM's patent portfolio makes it impervious to almost any patent lawsuit. They probably have patents on very fundamental things that all software makes use of.

But I don't consider software to be an invention, and I don't consider it to be valid to be patented. Unfortunately, the government doesn't see it this way and continues to grant software patents that hurt the industry.

Agreed. The only arguments I see FOR software patents aren't really arguments that support them. I've seen arguments like, "Well this is how the patent system works, so obviously it is working and doesn't need reform."

I have yet to see a good argument for allowing software patents. IBM's patent portfolio is the largest, but plenty of large companies can leverage their own patents against any small developer who files a patent, making his/her patent a uesless waste of money.

The League for Programming Freedom (http://lpf.ai.mit.edu/Patents/patents.html)
Note the exclusive or patent mentioned at the top. When I found out that it was patented, I laughed. I independently invented that manner of drawing in when I made games in QBasic. The only thing I am claiming is that if I can come up with something like that back before I even knew what it was I was doing, it can't be novel and considered a real invention.

Copyright and trademark were good enough for the longest time. Software development innovates based on previous developments. Patents at best slow down development and at worst will turn the United States into the world's least technologically advanced nation in terms of software development.

And of course, the EFF is nowhere to be seen unless it's ultimately about protecting the rights of software pirates.

http://www.eff.org/patent/
http://www.eff.org/IP/
Nowhere to be seen, huh?

The EFF does amazing work when it comes to protecting the rights of citizens. The DMCA, INDUCE Act, so-called Digital Rights Management, file-sharing, reverse-engineering, current copyright law, etc. These are all topics they cover. To say that their only purpose is to ulitimately protect the rights of pirates implies that they aren't doing anything good.

milo

11-02-2004, 09:56 AM

Based on my reading of it, and depending upon how it's interpreted, this is actually a really quirky technique for doing 3D rendering - based on spherical coordinates around an object. I don't know of ANY games that use this technique.
Homeworld. Falcon 4.0. And most current 3D modeling applications.

Go back and read Claim 1 again. The claimed invention is a method of panning a viewpoint along a spherical shell surrounding a target object. Zooming in and out is accomplished by varying the radius of the sphere. This is basically the only viewing mechanism in Homeworld, and it is the same as the "Orbit View" camera in Falcon 4.0 (and probably a bunch of other air and space sims as well).

Elite would most likely not qualify as prior art because it did not use that viewing mechanism. I have no idea what kinds of 3D modeling programs or other applications that were available in the mid-eighties which might have used such a technique for controlling the view.

arcadetown

11-02-2004, 10:08 AM

Please note, people might want to be careful with their statements made in public as legally those words could potentially be used against you later on. Sucks but what we learned from prior issues. Makes you wonder if we really live in a free society.

cliffski

11-02-2004, 10:21 AM

GBGames

11-02-2004, 10:30 AM

"Makes you wonder if we really live in a free society"

as far as american law is concerned, it fdoesnt seem to be the case. luckily i live in europe ;) so I'm happy to say that lawsuits like this are a pile of doo-doos, and I hope whoever dreamed it up has his business career ruined ;).

That's nice. http://kwiki.ffii.org/ElectPart0405En

Europe might not be safe for long.

If I were you, I'd definitely make sure that I was writing letters, making calls, etc so that such patents can't be part of European law.

cliffski

11-02-2004, 10:41 AM

I'd love to think that it would make a difference, but our UK govt is so in the pockets of big business (witness latest changes to gambling law) that its a losing battle sadly... (till they get kicked out of office)

GBGames

11-02-2004, 10:55 AM

Well, why not join an organization like http://swpat.ffii.org/group/todo/ to help out? Don't take a defeatist attitude! I voted in the election today and I could just as easily have said that my vote doesn't count.

AnotherDev

11-02-2004, 01:03 PM

I'll patent respiration and will sue the whole planet.

undersan

11-02-2004, 06:42 PM

Suppose you go to a museum and look at a sculpture. What method do you use to look at it? Most likely, you move in a circle around the sculpture, in order to view it from different angles.

Doesn't that seem like an obvious method? In 1988, the patent office apparently decided it wasn't.

Jason Chong

11-02-2004, 11:18 PM

Another write up at

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=5267

Stefan Maton

11-03-2004, 02:35 AM

well... reading further through the patent it seems to me that it's tied to the hardware that has been described : Intel chips etc. That would rule out most console titles and all non Intel chip based hardware (means AMD based hardware). So, the patent is valid for all intel based hardware and not others... Or is my understanding of the patent system wrong that the patent is tied to what is written in it ?

Dom

11-03-2004, 03:41 AM

Patents cover the idea, not the specific implementation.

mahlzeit

11-03-2004, 03:57 AM

It's the other way around, actually: patents cover a specific implementation of an idea. Unfortunately, with software the two are the same and that is why software patents are vile.

Dom

11-03-2004, 04:18 AM

Sorry - your right.
I always get those two mixed up :P

Coyote

11-03-2004, 09:33 AM

Homeworld. Falcon 4.0. And most current 3D modeling applications.

Go back and read Claim 1 again. The claimed invention is a method of panning a viewpoint along a spherical shell surrounding a target object. Zooming in and out is accomplished by varying the radius of the sphere. This is basically the only viewing mechanism in Homeworld, and it is the same as the "Orbit View" camera in Falcon 4.0 (and probably a bunch of other air and space sims as well).

I'd have to dig into the nitty-gritty details, but from what I understand this patent applies to a quirky graphical coordinate system (basically a polar coordinate system). Using a cartesian coordinate system to accomplish the same results is not going to infringe on a patent - patents only apply to the use of a particular technique or process, never the end results. (Well, it USED to be never - the way people are playing fast and loose with software patents these days, I guess you should never say never).

I dunno about homeworld --- that game could have used a viewing system that was based on polar coordinates, but I doubt it. I guess in theory this patent could be interpreted broadly enough to be used against this kind of viewing system, which is why I guess they need to take it seriously. But I didn't see that when I was looking over it, nor could I imagine anyone interpreting it that broadly. But that's because I'm somewhat educated on the subject. No telling what a judge will think.

milo

11-03-2004, 11:57 AM

I am not a patent lawyer. But I am listed as an inventor on a software patent, so I have at least that much insight into the process, having been through it at least once many years ago.

My understanding of how patents work is that the important part is the claims section. This is the section that defines exactly what the inventor claims to have invented and what he wants to have protected against copying. The rest of the document is essentially background information that a) proves the idea has been reduced to practice and b) helps the reader understand the context of the abstract invention described in the claims.

The claims of this patent do not mention any particular arithmetic for representing vector spaces, nor for transforming one vector space into another. The claims do talk about controlling the location of the viewpoint with respect to the focus point by specifying latitude (elevation), longitude (azimuth), and radial distance through an input device.

I could imagine a game like Tomb Raider avoiding the patent claims because they used an automated algorithm to compute the camera viewpoint, instead of relying on direct user input. The "mouselook" technique in FPS games may or may not be different enough to avoid the claims. It's hard to say.

MirekCz

11-03-2004, 04:20 PM

mouselook technique is different as you don't go "around" an object to see it from all sides. mouselook is used to represent head movements and not to get a good view on objects...

oNyx

11-03-2004, 04:46 PM

Apparently the moon needs to stop rotating around the earth immediately, because it's obviously infringing that patent.

Really. What a great invention! It's almost as good as using addition for creating sums.

As usual there's prior art, the math behind it is hundreds of years old and that what has been "invented" already existed in the real world.

Coyote

11-04-2004, 07:55 AM

merovingian

11-04-2004, 09:36 AM

That is why you used to be unable to patent software... because the assertion was that programs were math and you couldn't patent math. That changed about 20 years ago though.

I've been involved in a few software patents myself (though I'm kind of embarassed to admit it). What it really comes down to (in my understanding) is whether or not the potential violator has duplicated your process. From what I can gather, the process described here is providing a spherical coordinate (Longitude & latitude & range) and generating a 3D view of an object from that. Will that be interpreted broadly enough to include people using Euler Angles or Quaternians and a distance from an object, or resolving it to a Cartesian coordinate system? Or will the claim be interpreted as narrowly and strictly as possible?

Or will it just get tossed. Frankly, I think it's ludicrous that people should suddenly have to spend the time and money defending themselves against an 11th hour patent that shouldn't have been issued in the first place. Ah, well.

When I was in college (1986), I once argued with a CS professor about whether it was easier to implement a view system using Eulerian angles or a quaternion-like approach expressed as matrices. They're ultimately the same thing, but since the latter resolved to rotating around axes defined by the columns of the current view matrix, it's kind of easier to understand and uses but one class of rotation matrix - the generic rotate around a given axis by x degrees matrix that is easily derived from quaternions.

He yelled at me that I *HAD* to use Eulerian angles or it wouldn't work. I told him he didn't understand what I was describing and the rotational axes I needed were much more easily obtained from said columns. He concluded that I was nuts and that I should go find out just how wrong I was.

About six months later, I commercially published the software that used my method. It was braindead simple to understand, and I've since seen it derived independently a whole bunch of times. I never really wrapped my head around quaternions. Orthogonal rotation matrices can be represented with five values and a sign bit as opposed to 4 values and by that time, memory just wasn't that expensive. You had to normalize both of them at every iteration anyway, so I never embraced quaternions or Eulerian angles for that matter.

So as you may have guessed, I have prior art right there. But sheesh, the long range scan of Star Raiders (1979) would constitute the same.

I suspect the patent will be thrown out the minute they try to sue a 3D hardware company which then stomps on them and grinds them into tiny little bits. Perhaps that's why they haven't done so yet. In any event, the patent expires in just over 2 years.

mahlzeit

11-04-2004, 09:48 AM

Whether a patent is bogus or not, or whether it is being infringed upon, unfortunately isn't always relevant. If a patent holder takes legal action against a small (software) company, there usually is only one way out of it: to settle. No matter how much prior art exists. You will only be able to take the case to court if you have plenty of spare cash laying around. And in case you win, you don't get any of that money back (in the USA at least). This is another reason why the current patent system is vile: it gives the big boys magic ammo that small companies cannot deflect.

arcadetown

11-04-2004, 10:43 AM

"Whether a patent is bogus or not" sort of hit the nail on the head. Going forward it could be possible that big companies get bit by the monster they unleashed and the political climate will change. Could be wishful thinking, who knows.

For example, in the wireless industry there are packs of lawyers which employ small armies of engineers whose sole purpose is to invent an obvious new use of technology for the purpose of simply putting it on paper to never be used except for later randsom extraction. Witness 3G and 4G wireless technologies. Read that one firm built a portfolio of numerous patents that they use to extract 10s of millions in licensing fees from the big cell carriers, and their plans on 4G technologies are for 100s of millions. Aerospace engineers keep log books of work which are periodically signed by notary publics specifically just to combat this.

While the patent system has a purpose, some could argue it has been perverted beyond it's original intention, out of step with how fast modern economic activity moves, and hampering creation & investment instead of fostering it. But everyone is drilled about how great the patent system is from childhood on so only once perceptions are changed on a large scale....

Bluecat

11-04-2004, 10:48 AM

While the patent system has a purpose, some could argue it has been perverted beyond it's original intention, out of step with how fast modern economic activity moves, and hampering creation & investment instead of fostering it. But everyone is drilled about how great the patent system is from childhood on so only once perceptions are changed on a large scale....

I tend to think that it will only be changed when it starts to hinder the US economy rather than help it. If patents stifle innovation in the US, but don't stifle innovation in the US's rival economies, there will be a push from US corporate and political interests to change it. But until the corporates see a threat, they have a vested interest in the status quo.

Chaster

11-04-2004, 11:03 AM

He yelled at me that I *HAD* to use Eulerian angles or it wouldn't work. I told him he didn't understand what I was describing and the rotational axes I needed were much more easily obtained from said columns. He concluded that I was nuts and that I should go find out just how wrong I was.

LOL. I took a CAD class back in college (used Apollo workstations) and the Professor told me "PC's will never be fast enough to do CAD-type applications"...

LOL!!!!

tolik

11-04-2004, 01:53 PM

After GameDAILY BIZ reported that Texas law firm McKool Smith had sued 12 major game publishers for patent infringement, a PC hardware manufacturer informed us that 19 major PC manufacturing firms had also been sued by the McKool Smith firm, and virtually every smaller manufacturer threatened. HP, Dell, IBM, Toshiba, SCEA, Acer, MPC, Systemax, Fujitsu, Micro Electronics, Matsushita, Averatec, Polywell, Sharp, Twinhead, Uniwill, and JVC are all named as defendants in the suit.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=8260

FUN!