creative labs teaches Carmack a thing or two about shadows?

DemoCoder said:
Nope, RSA pretty much boxed off the entire idea of public key encryption. People tried variations, using different mathematical operations, and still got sued.

The US patent system is screwed. I mean, comeon, 1-click, "shopping carts", "online auctions", and pretty much "online anything" got patented. Netscape got sued by Wang because Wang had patented the "Save As" menu option!
Click to expand...

Very interesting, hmm maybe the use of RSA is what was patented not the math itself?
 
DemoCoder said:
Nope, RSA pretty much boxed off the entire idea of public key encryption. People tried variations, using different mathematical operations, and still got sued.
Click to expand...
[/begin conspiracy_theory]
The RSA patent was granted so that only one company would have public key encryption. Since RSA was the only source for strong public key encryption, all implementations would come from RSA and would, therefore, contain the backdoor that the NSA (that's No Such Agency for non-Americans) needed to break things encoded with RSA.
[/end conspiracy_theory]

-FUDie
 
Chalnoth said:
From what I understand, a patent can be shown to be invalid if their is either prior art, or it can be shown that the idea is obvious. Since Carmack obviously came to the solution independently, I think the second could easily be argued.
Click to expand...

hmm, your definition is not the accepted legal definition of "obvious", which as far as I can tell is:

1) find 20 year old kid who may or may not have been able to complete high school.

2) put him in a locked room with abstract problem statement

3) see if he can come up with the patented solution

4) give him at most 6 hours (after all thats enough time to take the MCAT)

The level of obvious is obviously non-obvious.


Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
 
DemoCoder said:
Netscape got sued by Wang because Wang had patented the "Save As" menu option!
Click to expand...
F*ck me man... can't even begin to describe the level of stupidity things like this are on... :oops:
 
DemoCoder said:
Nope, RSA pretty much boxed off the entire idea of public key encryption. People tried variations, using different mathematical operations, and still got sued.

The US patent system is screwed. I mean, comeon, 1-click, "shopping carts", "online auctions", and pretty much "online anything" got patented. Netscape got sued by Wang because Wang had patented the "Save As" menu option!
Click to expand...

I completely agree on the screwiness.

Hrm, now correct me if I'm wrong. So my theoretical different abstraction thing didn't work in this case. Regardless, what you seem to be saying is the real sticking point is the stuff surrounding the maths, the public/private key idea, not so much the math of the encryption.
 
aaronspink said:
Chalnoth said:
From what I understand, a patent can be shown to be invalid if their is either prior art, or it can be shown that the idea is obvious. Since Carmack obviously came to the solution independently, I think the second could easily be argued.
Click to expand...

hmm, you definition is not the accepted legal definition of obvious, which as far as I can tell is:

1) find 20 year old kid who may or may not have been able to complete high school.

2) put him in a locked room with abstract problem statement

3) see if he can come up with the patented solution

4) give him at most 6 hours (after all thats enough time to take the MCAT)

The level of obvious is obviously non-obvious.
Click to expand...

Given the huge numbers of completely illiterate 20 year olds in the America...
 
DemoCoder said:
Nope, RSA pretty much boxed off the entire idea of public key encryption. People tried variations, using different mathematical operations, and still got sued.
Click to expand...
People get sued all the time on invalid patents. See RAMBUS (who did get most memory manufacturers to pay them licenses on invalid patents).
 
I really hope that the European Union votes against software patents. Because we surely don't need any stupid software patents that are currently done in the US. DemoCoder has summed up some quite stupid patents that are so common/general that they should have never been allowed.

Microsoft has been sued enough in the last few years by these stupid type of patents that they are patenting everything they can right now. Like something very general that when a comment in a source code file is encountered that starts with TODO that it is automatically added to your task list in your development environment.

It is so general that it is plainly stupid that it can be patented. But I cannot blame Microsoft, because everyone else is doing it.
 
People get sued all the time on invalid patents. See RAMBUS (who did get most memory manufacturers to pay them licenses on invalid patents).[/quote]

Don't believe that hype. Rambus just might be in the right on their case. There certainly is enough evidence that at a minimum, neither side deserves any sympathy.

Aaron Spink
speaking for myself inc.
 
The way I heard the story about the RAMBUS patents was something like this: First, RAMBUS filed some patent applications, around 1990 or so. Then, a couple of years later, the standards body JEDEC started standardization work on SDRAM. RAMBUS participated in this work without disclosing their patent applications to the JEDEC working group, and for some time kept adding to their patent applications ideas that were discussed at JEDEC, many of which ended up in the final SDRAM standard. Then, several years later when the patents finally passed, they started suing everybody who made SDRAMs for infringement on these patents. IIRC, many of these suits are still going on.

If I have gotten this story wrong or omitted important pieces, please correct me.
 
StarGazer said:
Well, what are you waiting for, Reverend? :oops:
Click to expand...
Well, I don't intend to just stick John's comments as a news post. I hate what's happen wrt this and intend to do some small semi-rant. I shouldn't just link to this particular thread in the news post -- it would be better to do some reference to John's "reverse" method, then this Creative underhanded bitching and then let you guys know what John thinks. That's best, yes?

I have to get to work now, so there isn't time to make the news post. I only have time right now to make a news post (just did) about some info regarding certain levels in FarCry and the type of graphics stuff in those levels.
 
arjan de lumens said:
The way I heard the story about the RAMBUS patents was something like this: First, RAMBUS filed some patent applications, around 1990 or so. Then, a couple of years later, the standards body JEDEC started standardization work on SDRAM. RAMBUS participated in this work without disclosing their patent applications to the JEDEC working group, and for some time kept adding to their patent applications ideas that were discussed at JEDEC, many of which ended up in the final SDRAM standard. Then, several years later when the patents finally passed, they started suing everybody who made SDRAMs for infringement on these patents. IIRC, many of these suits are still going on.

If I have gotten this story wrong or omitted important pieces, please correct me.
Click to expand...
This is just about what I heard. This makes these patents invalid (or at least unenforceable) because Dell tried pretty much the same thing some years earlier, and got it thrown out in court. RAMBUS, along with all other members of JEDEC, signed an agreement to disclose all of their relevant patents. They didn't, so they should forfeit.
 
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