*cough* Patent Troll *cough*.....

Actually, they have apparently been using their own patents developing works around them. Patent trolls are usually those who try to enforce patents (many of which they have never developed) through lawsuits, never using them for actual technology advancement (which is the base of the patent system). The question is whether they will hit World of Warcraft and Guild Wars.

Of course, prior art may go back to MUD games, especially MOOs where you are able to manipulate objects to build your own rooms (since I am a professional programmer, I cannot read patents other than the ones I or the company I work for filed... so MUD/MOO may not even fit as prior art).

Umm... What? This cannot be serious? This strikes me as silly on the level of rappers trying to copyright words.

It won't stick.. The patent is too loosely written without enough research done on the people they are trying to sue..and that's just a tiny bit of what's wrong with this. It's a joke.
They'll only lose money. Ridiculous.

What about FPS games where you can send text messages during a match? Hasn't that been a standard in every game?

Guild Wars is published by NCsoft, so they are already being hit, Roberto. They may file suit over Blizzard, unless there is some specific technology in the software that NCsoft uses.

Ultimately, very lame. I am reminded of a previous Gamasutra article http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3562/the_designers_notebook_damn_all_.php

Just to highlight another factor for discussion, these are US Patents.

Gotta love the diagram on page 3. I've heard of "patent pending", but the idea of patent penguins is quite innovative.

On a more serious note, there is too much prior art for the suit to have any chance. Even something like the old VR game "Dactyl Nightmare" precedes the date of filing of the interaction patent's document by almost a decade and can be described by all of its twenty points.

Chris,

NCSoft provides products and services to the US and can therefore be targeted.

If this company wins here, they have the possibility of shutting down Blizzard and Sony as well as dozens of smaller shops and prevent any external studio from releasing their MMO in the US.

It most likely won't come to that and most of the larger companies may end up settling and providing royalties to this company.

Personally, I want to see them fail hard.

What a frigging joke this patent is. This patent covers the exact same technology that we have seen in use since as early as 1992 with 2.5D and 3D games that also used a client/server. Worse yet there is really nothing in this patent that could not be applied against todays non-MMO games since its broad based methods are still in use in every cleint/server based multiplayer game on the market today.

Cmon guys let's find the prior art and give these patent trolls what they deserve!

I cannot wait to see multiplayer 2.5D and 3D games from as early as 1992 being used to invalidate this patent.

@Ephriam

Completely agree with your sentiments and I too hope they fail hard.

Consider a company based in Europe or Asia providing a globally accessible MMO online. If the servers are not based in the US (or elsewhere under US jurisdiction), they are unaffected by this patent.

Even if it isn't "patent trolling", this is still a blatant misuse of the concept of a patent. A patent should be used for a genuinely new and creative piece of technology; the telephone and the lightbulb come to mind as examples. When the concept of patents was created, no one had any idea what technology would be like today, and I can't imagine they would actually have wanted such simple processes as Amazon's 1-Click or "user interaction in a virtual space". Neither of those things are inventions, they're ideas, and that's not the same thing at all. Patenting a piece of technology is perfectly acceptable. Patenting a way to *use* a piece of technology is not.

User Interaction In a Virtual Space...wouldn't that cover every chat room, IM application, MMO, standard multiplayer, everywhere? I smell a problem with this...

Unless like someone said above, NCSoft is using a SPECIFIC technology that Worlds.Com has already created for use. Thats the only thing which could hold and validity.

Thats like someone saying mcDonalds, Burger King and every fast food resturant are infringing on my patent to "consume liquids through an exterior process" (The Straw). Quick someone set me up with a lawyer!

Aha, thank you Austin, forgot NCsoft was the one developing Guild Wars.

It would be nice if the company suing had to repay all legal fees when they get denied in court.

It seems to me that they're going after NCsoft because they're struggling and might not be able to afford a court case.

While if they went after Sony or Blizzard they'd get crushed.

They're going after NcSoft because it's a Korean company that will be in a plaintiff-friendly East Texas courtroom. They assume a jury won't be as sympathetic to a non-American. They think NcSoft is the easiest first target. If they prevail, the bigger guys like Blizzard face a precedent.

Man, NcSoft just keeps taking hits. First they get mugged by the Garriott boys with Tabula Rasa, and now they're gonna get robbed by bloodthirsty patent-troll lawyers.

@L Foz, Stephen: no, the patent is specific about user interaction in a 3D virtual space using a client/server model. Text-based and 2D-based virtual spaces are not covered. So, the way I understand it, 3D games like "Air Warrior" (1986), "Battletech" (1990), or "Meridian 59" (1995) would count, but multiplayer games like "NetTrek" (2D), "Ultima Online" (2.5D) or "Tradewars" (text-based BBS) would not.

I'm going to patent verbal communication using the human mouth, lungs and vocal chords as a delivery system, then I'm going to sue every human who utters a word!

what nonsense. I was product manager for COMMUNICATION and ENETRTAINMENT products at CompuServe from 1979-1985. The earliest inventor of Chat was CompuServe (1982), with one my my products, called, "CB Simulator."

And when it comes to "Virtual worlds," I created the first commercial MMO, MegaWars, in 1982, while at CompuServe and went on to create GEnie for which at least two-dozen more MMOs, many of which were graphical, 3D "virtual spaces" were offered commercially from both internal and third-party developers.

Beyond that, the practice of user interaction in a virtual 3D space existed well before this "purported" patent. The first graphical front-end, 3D, virtual world with chat was Air Warrior in 1986. In addition, the principles of user-perspective views of virtual worlds was well-known at least 15 years before their patent filing. GEnie had graphical MMOs and CHAT products for the Apple Macintosh (A-MAZE-ING, 1988), IBM (Stellar Emporer, Air Warrior, BattleTech, RS Cards, and CHAT games, among others as early as 1986). Other ISPs such as Delphi, AOL, US Videotel, and more had graphical MMOs from Kesmai Corp (now owned by EA).

Any lawyers out there that need an expert witness and prior art on this issue, contact me.

It is absolutely CATASTROPHIC.

In the past, I've been fairly open to the application of patents, and still believe that behind this hell of a mess, there were good intentions, but there it has gone too far.

Have you read the descriptions?
They are all encompassing and as damning vague as they can be some times.

Worse, what about all those other patents (links you can find following the former link presented at the top of this article):

4414621 Interactive visual communications system Nov 8, 1983
4441162 Local network interface with control processor & DMA controller for coupling data processing stations to common serial communications medium Apr 3, 1984
4493021 Multicomputer communication system Jan 8, 1985
4503499 Controlled work flow system Mar 5, 1985
4551720 Packet switching system Nov 5, 1985
4654483 Electronic conference system Mar 31, 1987
4686698 Workstation for interfacing with a video conferencing network Aug 11, 1987
4718005 Distributed control of alias name usage in networks Jan 5, 1988
4768150 Application program interface to networking functions Aug 30, 1988
4777595 Apparatus for transferring blocks of information from one node to a second node in a computer network Oct 11, 1988
4780821 Method for multiple programs management within a network having a server computer and a plurality of remote computers Oct 25, 1988
4796293 Enhanced dedicated teleconferencing system Jan 3, 1989
4814984 Computer network system with contention mode for selecting master Mar 21, 1989
4825354 Method of file access in a distributed processing computer network Apr 25, 1989
4887204 System and method for accessing remote files in a distributed networking environment Dec 12, 1989
4897781 System and method for using cached data at a local node after re-opening a file at a remote node in a distributed networking environment Jan 30, 1990
4937784 Distributed interactive processing method in complex system including plural work stations and plural host computers and apparatus using the same Jun 26, 1990
4939509 Data conferencing arrangement for stations having keyboards and displays, using a keyboard buffer and a screen buffer Jul 3, 1990
4949248 System for shared remote access of multiple application programs executing in one or more computers Aug 14, 1990
4949254 Method to manage concurrent execution of a distributed application program by a host computer and a large plurality of intelligent work stations on an SNA network Aug 14, 1990
5008853 Representation of collaborative multi-user activities relative to shared structured data objects in a networked workstation environment Apr 16, 1991

Take the one featured in the article, plus those above, and you're pretty much covering the entirety of the "cyber" media spectrum, from multiplayer games (not even MMOs people, look at the claims) to community websites to TeamSpeak to methods for data processing when it merely comes to protocols and what else, etc.
Freaking nuts!

hi 5's Damien Foletto .. awesome

This may explain why they are taking this stance:

http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/snapshot/snapshot.asp?capId=10
2490

And here's the list of people you can thank:

http://investing.businessweek.com/businessweek/research/stocks/people/people.asp
?symbol=WDDD.OB

Stone,

You are correct. They are claiming everything. In my experience, this is typical of this type of ploy. First, they are plying on the ignorance of the US Patent Office clerks to understand the concepts of "cyberspace." Second, they (the US Patent office and perhaps the company, worlds.com, itself) have not studied the history of online to know that these sorts of "technologies" have been known by those knowledgeable of the Online technology evolution, of Internet and X.25 networking, or from mainframe to client-server computing platforms.

Look at Kevin's links to the Bulletin Board company...look at their reported revenues in 2007 and 2008 ($0). My wife's hobby / e-bay 'store' has done more revenue than they have.

I've consulted for several firms in defense of such frivolous lawsuits and patent claims in the past. In most cases, the respective patents are revoked; but not without considerable time and expense by the defending companies and the gamer community.

Great list Stone! Yup sounds like someone took advantage of a misunderstood tech...some of these could be attributed to Xerox or IBM as well....I mean is someone going to claim the "WASD" keyboard mapping as well?

This highlight an important fact that the patents system is broken and been taken advantage by the ugly lawyer and wanna-get-rich-quick bastard which doesn't added any value what so ever to the innovative process of innovation development.

This is a complete joke, but still not a good thing for NCsoft at all. They need to get guild wars 2 out before they have the money to deal with this kind of thing.

I wish them a lot of luck...SCO tried this (with a flimsy case but still tried it) and the company is now worthless and virtually bankrupt. I'd love to see them go after Blizzard with the same patents (if they're selective about who they sue it'll throw doubts on the enforceability of their patents...some of the people can't be right and others wrong). I think Blizzard can hold out for quite a while...as this idiot company runs out of money and drives itself into the ground.

I think it's high time the patent system was looked at...it no longer serves the purpose its founders had set for it. Now, it's an excuse to milk other people for their ingenuity (please don't tell me this ridiculously obscure company really invented this stuff...they saw what was coming and took advantage of the fact that most game companies at the time were still green when it came to patents...these types are the types of companies that need to be shut down for being 100% useless...

If I where the judge I would toss this patent out the door for three main reason:

1. It has been too many years since the patent was approved and they acted on infringement.
2. The patents had been in use for some time by others before the patent approval, although this may be faulted to the patent office, at the time of the approval of the patent there was several prior arts.
3. If the patent claims are accepted, the damages to companies and consumers would be far too great as these and related patents are in too widespread use by now and should be considered public domain instead.

I believe Meridian 59 was released for sale in September of 1996 before these guys filed their first patent in November of 1996. If nothing else that should constitute prior art since there were specifically talking about 3D space in their patent.

I think the growing theme in America would be, "If the ship is sinking, sue someone else!" From what I'm seeing here, suing/patent trolling apparently takes less energy than coming up with original ideas to patent or developing any type of useful technology. Just hire yourself a rabid lawyer and away you go!
Obviously our patent system is hideously flawed if U.S. businesses can make these sorts of claims. No one should be able to sit around trying to patent general internet protocols in use by the entire world. Nor should you be able to sue a company right now for something that was actually developed by someone else decades ago. Obviously our system needs a revamp to cut the crap. This is an embarrassment!
Also, I wholeheartedly agree with most all the points you guys are bringing up. It's extremely lame that NC Soft is being singled out when there are countless other games that use the "patented technology" that's being fingered here. Clearly this company is choosing their battles, hoping that a company facing a bit of turmoil right now, founded by non-U.S. citizens, will be trumped by their all-American Texas court setting. And we wonder why the rest of the world scoffs at us?

I'd imagine it'd be in Sony, Blizzard, Mythic and even Bioware's best interest to help ncsoft out here (if they even need it, they aren't THAT bad off, are they?) so as to prevent a precedent from being set.

Because somewhere, somehow, you just know some other patent troll has patented something that is used in either WoW, Everquest II, WAR, or the upcoming Bioware mmo. If NCsoft loses, I can almost guarantee another case like this in the next couple of years.

1) To infringment a patent you must follow step by step the patent, so it is pretty easy to void a patent, changing one (or more) part of the patent, for example if i patent "two penguins in a room are able chat", then i haven't right over "two canary in a room are able to chat".

2) Misuse,generic usage, or unfair use of the patent, you can be grant of the patent "3d representation in a 2d surface" (in fact it was granted) BUT you can't obtain royalties from such patent, hence this patent is as good as toilet paper.

Guess every larger program includes patent infringements.
I mean, if I have already an idea to solve a certain problem, but google anyway, there is already a high chance that I get some patents listed. Then I take a look and them and often notice that it's either the first idea, you would come up with or it's just an application of an algorithm that is common math knowledge since an eternity and so it's also not something that should be patentable, because the mathematician did the brain work, not the one who grabbed it from a book or paper first.
Good that enough people in the EU are fighting against software patents whenever the topic is on the table.

Last thing I remember that I was googling about quaternions and noticed that someone already has patented them for interpolation in character animation, although quaternions are known since Hamilton wrote about them in the 19th century and that they have also been used to interpolate rotations in different areas for much longer than when the patent was granted and to transfer it like from robotics to character animation must have been a nobrainer.