3d Spherical Panning Patent Lawsuits

[Cryect]

Hmmm so the law firm McKool Smith is sueing 12 different game companies over a patent for 3d Spherical Panning filed in 1987 (basically after reading the patent its just looking at a central point and changing the angles and distance). Its one of the most screwed up things I've seen and can't believe the patent was given considering how obvious the equations are to derive and come up with the idea.

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.

http://biz.gamedaily.com/features.asp?article_id=8236

Here is the patent in question
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-....WKU.&OS=PN/4,734,690&RS=PN/4,734,690

 

[Inane_Dork]

A 12 year old with an internet connection could prove prior art, so I doubt this will stick.



EDIT: Noticeably absent is Microsoft. I guess they didn't want to take MS's legal department on.

 

[Cryect]

Well I'm more irritated about that it was ever issued in the first place based on it being obvious to one skilled in the art.

 

[Dave Baumann]

I wonder if, given the number of people that have implemented it by now, the fact that they haven't actively tried to uphold the patent before will count against them.

 

[ERP]

Unfortunately you can ignore a patent for 20+ years and then sue everyone in violation with no penalty.

The onus is on the implementer to be aware of what's patented, not on the patentor to inform everyone.

Trademarks work the other way around, but that's another story.

 

[Cryect]

Well kinda hard to ignore a patent for 20+ years before suing since patents only last 20 years (here in the US at least). Or do you mean you can sue people after the patent expires for violating it while it was in effect?

 

[epicstruggle]

Well kinda hard to ignore a patent for 20+ years before suing since patents only last 20 years (here in the US at least). Or do you mean you can sue people after the patent expires for violating it while it was in effect?

i think the 20+ year figure was just used as an illustration.

epic

 

[no_way]

The onus is on the implementer to be aware of what's patented, not on the patentor to inform everyone.

So i should basically check each and every line of code i write against patent database ? :/
simply absurd

 

[ERP]

Sorry yes the 20 years was just and example.

I never said patent law was sensible or in some cases even reasonable.
It is what it is.

Your better off never looking at patents and waiting to be sued and evaluating if you want to pay or not at that point. Deliberate violation is tripple damages, a lot of companies have a don't look at patents policy for exactly that reason.

Given the state of the patent system, I doubt that there is a single resonably sized piece of software in existence that isn't in violation of at least a few patents. The patent office just isn't qualified to verify the value of a software patent, so they just grant them. Unfortunately because of the way the system is structured it is incredibly expensive to overturn a granted patent. It's one of the reasons commpanies practice defensive patents.

 

[Simon F]

IANAPL but .....

Sorry yes the 20 years was just and example.
I never said patent law was sensible or in some cases even reasonable.
It is what it is.

It was the US law, in particular, that wasn't sensible.

The rest of the world (AFAIK) allows a patent to be valid for 20 years from the time of filing, i.e. the date which you first submit the patent to the patent office. It would also automatically become public after 18months even if it hadn't yet been granted.

The US had the stupid concept of allowing a patent to be enforced for (IIRC) 17 years from the time of grant, i.e. from the date that it was finally approved.

This led to the disgusting practices such as "submarining" whereby some companies would keep making adjustments to the patent (eg following others' research), keeping it hidden from the public, and avoiding it being granted until it suited them.

Note the following line on the title page of this patent:

This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 633,156, filed July 20, 1984 and now abandoned

Some of it was filed in 84 yet it didn't get granted for more than 4 years.

Thankfully, the US changed its laws recently so that new patents are treated in the same way as the rest of the world.

 

[davefb]

its worse now,, 5 more patents , this time against computer makers .

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/04/mckool_smith_lawsuit_update/

i despair ..

 

[DemoCoder]

Well, you can still be hit by a "submarine" patent even with the 20 year rule from filing date. It's slightly less disgusting, but writing some software, and then being slapped with a patent suit on XOR cursors or 1-click hyperlinks 10 years later when the patent is granted is still highly annoying and expensive.

The fact that pending patents are made public is irrelevent. Hardly anyone bothers searching, unless you are filing a patent yourself, searching just increases the damages if you do get sued (as ERP mentioned), and many patents are so freaking vague that its hard to know if you are in violation anyway. (see Kodak suit vs Sun's Java) Is it worth John Carmack or Tim Sweeney's time to worry about patents and mine patent databases to see if they are vaguely in violation of anything? Answer: they most assuredly are, and they may as well hope they get lucky and no one decides to go after them.


Business method and math/algorithm/software patents need to be abolished or severely limited.

 

[Simon F]

Looks like a situation where a company is, for all intents and purposes, dead and the suits are desperately trying to extract some cash. I've seen this sort of thing before and it is not pretty.

As for those 6(?) extra patents:

4,730,185 - looks to be some hardware that does dithering. I don't see that as in anyway relevant.

5,132,670: The abstract says:

A system is disclosed which reduces significantly the time for processing multi-bit two-color data for display.

Move along... nothing to see here folk.

Can't be ar^h^h bothered to look at the remaining ones just yet.

 

[nutball]

Looks like a situation where a company is, for all intents and purposes, dead and the suits are desperately trying to extract some cash. I've seen this sort of thing before and it is not pretty.

*cough*SCO*cough* ???

 

[nutball]

Unfortunately you can ignore a patent for 20+ years and then sue everyone in violation with no penalty.

Hmmm... I thought the patent holder had a duty to defend the patent in a reasonably pro-active manner. Maybe that's European patents I'm thinking of. I certainly know some people who've chosen not to patent some inventions because they couldn't afford to defend the patents, and this would have would have in effect renered the patent invalid. Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick somewhere :?

 

[Simon F]

Hmmm... I thought the patent holder had a duty to defend the patent in a reasonably pro-active manner.

You're thinking of trademarks.

 

[ERP]

Unfortunately you can ignore a patent for 20+ years and then sue everyone in violation with no penalty.

Hmmm... I thought the patent holder had a duty to defend the patent in a reasonably pro-active manner. Maybe that's European patents I'm thinking of. I certainly know some people who've chosen not to patent some inventions because they couldn't afford to defend the patents, and this would have would have in effect renered the patent invalid. Maybe I'm getting the wrong end of the stick somewhere :?

Simon is right Trademarks must be defended or they are lost.

If your not going to patent something (for whatever reason) the common work around is to publish the results in some industry publication, this theoretically prevents someone else from patenting it after the fact.

 

[Tim Murray]

If your not going to patent something (for whatever reason) the common work around is to publish the results in some industry publication, this theoretically prevents someone else from patenting it after the fact.

This is never really true in practice in the US because the USPTO is insane and doesn't seem to understand the concept of prior art.

 

[Simon F]

This is never really true in practice in the US because the USPTO is insane and doesn't seem to understand the concept of prior art.

.... Prior art allegedly can only be found in earlier patents.

 

[Captain Chickenpants]

Now extendted to Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.

You have to say, they have got guts!


Looking at it the reason that it hasn't been taken to court before is that the company involved only actually acquired the patents from Tektronix in June of this year.

I wonder how long it will be before they extend it to ATI and NVidia, will they even bother with us?

CC