Activision Sued Over Online Multiplayer in Call of Duty, WoW

[Rekrul]

Okay, let me explain something here, since a lot of people seem to have the wrong impression.

One of the key principles of intellectual properties is the idea for inventors to patent their ideas so they get credit for them, and other, bigger companies can't come along and steal their work, or develop (even through self-discovery) something that someone else had the idea for first. One big thing that is done with patents is people will patent ideas that they do not have the money to develop themselves and then shop around to find businesses who will come up with the money to do so, with the patent holder taking a substantial share of the profits. Things can be patented ahead of the tech curve, based on predictions of upcoming technologies and ways it could be used, again this is part of invention, and the idea being that if someone develops a tech can do something, they can then sell this idea for a way to use it.

I've just had the idea of car which flies and drives itself, I however lack any know-how in how to make it, buts it cool to sue the guy who does?

 

[Bruden]

Okay, let me explain something here, since a lot of people seem to have the wrong impression.

One of the key principles of intellectual properties is the idea for inventors to patent their ideas so they get credit for them, and other, bigger companies can't come along and steal their work, or develop (even through self-discovery) something that someone else had the idea for first. One big thing that is done with patents is people will patent ideas that they do not have the money to develop themselves and then shop around to find businesses who will come up with the money to do so, with the patent holder taking a substantial share of the profits. Things can be patented ahead of the tech curve, based on predictions of upcoming technologies and ways it could be used, again this is part of invention, and the idea being that if someone develops a tech can do something, they can then sell this idea for a way to use it.

I admit that I do not like where this is going either in this case, being a fan of WoW and online gaming. However, put yourselves in the shoes of an inventor with someone else coming along and stealing your idea, and then getting away with it because they are a big company.

An issue with patent violations of this sort also have to do with the specifics of how something is done. Being able to prove that something like "WoW" or "Call Of Duty" violated a long standing patent is not an easy thing to do because it can involve getting to the bottom of how something works, or what principle it operates on. Other copyright laws and liscencing agreements can make it difficult to get information about products and trade secrets behind them without breaking laws.

There is a substantial differance between putting a patent on something like "air" or something that previously existed, and a technological development or an idea.

Understand also that "online gaming" and these kinds of tournament systems are not some kind of long term part of human culture or metaconsciousness. The very idea of online gaming, virtual reality, cyberspace, and even The Internet is very, very recent. This kind of stuff was the domain of science fiction not too long ago. This is something that I think a lot of kids don't really "get" in growing up with this stuff.

Taking a general science fiction concept and then saying "here is a way we could make this really work" is perfectly valid, and if someone else takes that idea without giving you your cut for being there first, well that's a problem.

Now, I have no idea how this will play out in court, or the truth of the matter, since there just isn't that much information. However with all the griping I do about China's "robber economy" and patent violations and the like I can hardly claim that makers of online games I play should be immune to the same basic logic just because they are American and I like their product.

There is a danger here that if this is 100% legitimate that it could put Blizzard-Activision almost entirely out of business and wreck a lot of hugely profitable intellectual properties. That will blow chips for us, the gamers, but it won't change the fact that the guys getting hit were effectively thieves, or at least sloppy enough not to do their homework.

It could also be patent trolling, again there is no way to tell at this stage and with the information presented.

Honestly I've had some concerns even domestically that it's become too easy for the big businesses to do whatever they want, and effectively steam roll the little guys and the innovators whenever it becomes conveinent. If they really did come up with this tech back in 2002 and it was either stolen, or developed without the research, I am sort of cheering for them. I mean one of the thing that crushes innovation is the exploitation of the innovators.

I'm not positive, but I think you have never played an online game in your life. This was patented in 2002, the system was released and in copyright on dozens of games by 1998. By trying to defend their suit you're actually saying that if they win they should get sued into obliteration by companies like Valve and Sony who had exactly what the patent describes COPYRIGHTED more than 4 years before they laid any claim to it.

The only way Activision will lose this one is if their lawyers decide to go on a drug binge the night before because they're that confident. Seriously all they have to do is point out that the patent by all rights should not have been obtainable because they had no claim to an idea SEVERAL other people had released publicly years before they came up with it. What that means is everyone here suggesting patenting the air and the sun are making perfect analogies. Patent something you didnt develop, with vague terminology, that covers something that existed for years prior to your attempt to patent it.

 

[Sion_Barzahd]

Wasn't there someone else who claimed to have patented this sort of online multiplayer last year? He puffed up his chest made a lot of noise and threatened a lot of MMOs.

Then Blizz set their half demon half bloodelf lawyers on him and he disappeared. I doubt anything other than this will happen again.

 

[SovietSecrets]

One day I hope to become a judge so I can throw out these cases and we never have to hear of them.

 

[CatmanStu]

I think I am going to patent stupidity (Hmmm which continent shall I buy?)

Well, I patent the sun!

I will sue you if i ever get Skin Cancer.

Too late for that

I'll definitely be suing her ass if i get skin cancer! And im not joking if she is serious

You can't sue her because if you get close enough to the sun you will see a label that says; 'Prolonged use of this product can cause the following medical conditions: everything.'

 

[BabyRaptor]

And WoW is arguabnly not a tournament, as you are technically not directly pitted against one another in order to decide a winner.

Definition of tournament: a sporting competition in which contestants play a series of games to decide the winner

Battlegrounds, world PvP and arenas. Also, since this guy is clearly reaching for *anything* that might work, I wouldn't be surprised if he's claiming the Diablo and WarCraft 3 ladders on Battle.net also break his patent.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

What strange people...

 

[klaynexas3]

this reminds me of that chick that patented the sun. this better fall through, the idea of patenting something like that. if so, then i'm patenting water. and suing walker digital because i know everyone one of those bastards used my precious water

 

[Celtic_Kerr]

And WoW is arguabnly not a tournament, as you are technically not directly pitted against one another in order to decide a winner.

Definition of tournament: a sporting competition in which contestants play a series of games to decide the winner

Battlegrounds, world PvP and arenas. Also, since this guy is clearly reaching for *anything* that might work, I wouldn't be surprised if he's claiming the Diablo and WarCraft 3 ladders on Battle.net also break his patent.

True on the ranking ladders on battle net... Well considering StarCraft II is llike... on the same level as a national sport, it'll be interesting to see how this goes

EDIT: Meant national sport in Korea

 

[Carlston]

If it is there program... and cut and paste or even a good chunk of stolen code. Fine. Sure.


If they said they patented the IDEA of online tournies... ummm sterilize them, make sure they do not breed, and introduce them to the very earliest of online gaming. It's been done before.

 

[superbatranger]

Well, I patent the sun!

You're gonna have to ask that woman over in Spain permission to do so. Apparently, she owns it.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Walker Digital and Tim Langdell in videogame patent-trolling axis of evil?

 

[Alpha1Niner]

I really can't put into words the stupidity of this. There is a limit to patenting something and this just overdoes it. That John Carmack quote sums it up perfectly.

 

[Therumancer]

I'm not positive, but I think you have never played an online game in your life. This was patented in 2002, the system was released and in copyright on dozens of games by 1998. By trying to defend their suit you're actually saying that if they win they should get sued into obliteration by companies like Valve and Sony who had exactly what the patent describes COPYRIGHTED more than 4 years before they laid any claim to it.

The only way Activision will lose this one is if their lawyers decide to go on a drug binge the night before because they're that confident. Seriously all they have to do is point out that the patent by all rights should not have been obtainable because they had no claim to an idea SEVERAL other people had released publicly years before they came up with it. What that means is everyone here suggesting patenting the air and the sun are making perfect analogies. Patent something you didnt develop, with vague terminology, that covers something that existed for years prior to your attempt to patent it.

The thing is though that they aren't making claims against any and all online multiplayer games for the online component, technically though I believe there are a couple of differant patent suits in progress over that with people who claim to have patented the idea. I vaguely remember reading that Larry Niven's "Dreampark Corperation" is involved in one of them. One of the works that made Larry Niven famous having to do with virtual reality gaming in the future, and I believe he charted the path of development in his science fiction from the technology of the day up to the level he was talking about in the novels. Supposedly he and some engineers patented a lot of technologies and ideas conneced to this when people considered it pretty crazy. Dreampark Corperation having taken various "VR" booths and multiplayer games and such to conventions like Gencon for years. Of course ever since the first mentions I don't remember hearing much about how it turned out, but it's probably under dispute still because it can be argued that Larry Niven is arguably one of the conceptual fathers of this entire style of gaming. That has little to do with this case, I'm just mentioning it as a point of comparison.

This case seems to be based entirely on the tournament system and leaderboards being used from the way it reads. Without more information on the specific patent, it's hard for me to say whether I agree or not.

The thing to consider though is that officially ranked multiplayer is fairly recent, not going back until 1998 but being largely a development of this generation of consoles and systems. Indeed World Of Warcraft's ranked battlegrounds are a new addition to the game, although their Arena system predates it substantially. Modern Warfare is a title of the last few years.

I'm guessing that since the suit seems aimed at Activision-Blizzard specifically, that the complaint has to do not so much with the existance of a ranked tournament system, but with the exact manner in which it's been implemented. On a certain fundemental/code level the products of the companies under that umbrella probably function in a similar fashion for these purposes. Also, depending on how well protected/concealed that information was it's not entirely unreasonable that they wouldn't have known there was a violation until fairly recently.

 

[BabyRaptor]

I bolded the part that made NO sense whatsoever. Rednecks are in a reather small area. Not all americans are... And I don't think the stereotypical "Redneck hill billy" you're thinking of is considered smart enough to talk down about the government wasting their tax money.

I assume you've never watched any American news, which is understandable since you live in Canada. The person you quoted makes perfect sense...Have you heard of the "Keep the government out of my Medicare" fiasco? Hell, have you heard of the Tea Party? That's pretty much all they are.

 

[Therumancer]

Okay, let me explain something here, since a lot of people seem to have the wrong impression.

One of the key principles of intellectual properties is the idea for inventors to patent their ideas so they get credit for them, and other, bigger companies can't come along and steal their work, or develop (even through self-discovery) something that someone else had the idea for first. One big thing that is done with patents is people will patent ideas that they do not have the money to develop themselves and then shop around to find businesses who will come up with the money to do so, with the patent holder taking a substantial share of the profits. Things can be patented ahead of the tech curve, based on predictions of upcoming technologies and ways it could be used, again this is part of invention, and the idea being that if someone develops a tech can do something, they can then sell this idea for a way to use it.

I've just had the idea of car which flies and drives itself, I however lack any know-how in how to make it, buts it cool to sue the guy who does?

Assuming nobody else beat you to it, yes you could. Though it's a little more complicated than just saying this and claiming a patent, you would need to go to the office and present some kind of documentable proof of concept. This could include things like illustrations of the car, and would probably require you to also define the principles on which it was going to operate.

For example if you were an engineer who knew a lot about VTOLs and/or Vectored Thrust technology and predicted before anyone else that we were going to see those technologies becoming safe enough and mass-producable enough to be used in the consumer market, you
could patent a concept using them.

Typically this kind of patenting happens when technologies are first being developed however, and involve someone believing that technology is going to go in a paticular direction based on their knowlege. Incidently this leads to a lot of ridiculous patents being filed based on concepts or areas of science that were misunderstood. For example I remember reading in connection to the old "Space 1889 game" that the concept of the "Ether Propeller" was actually patented in real life, back when the concept of "Ether" had not been dispelled by science. In fact that idea inspired a sort of "what if" scenario based on if Ether had been proven and could be interacted with in order to propel ship at massive speeds as was theorized. In reality though it was a guy who was actually off his rocker, and it went nowhere.

 

[mew4ever23]

Oh look - another patent troll.

Ignoring the fact that multiplayer in both of the named games is optional and not run as a tournament (mostly, see below), I think I've found a loophole in the patent that will cause a hell of a lot of the lawsuits to be thrown out:

(b) responding to payment of an entry fee by the player for allowing the player to participate in a tournament occurring within a fixed time window via an associated input/output device

As long as a player has an active subscription, a copy of the game (and expansions due to level requirements), one can participate in current and upcoming Arena Seasons (because let's face it, An Arena season is unquestionably an online tournament) at no additional cost.

I don't understand how CoD multiplayer matches even remotely qualify as tournaments. There is no prize for being the victorious team in a match besides bragging rights and Win/Loss/Tie stats, and the game session ends when all members of one team have been killed.

 

[Therumancer]

Wasn't there someone else who claimed to have patented this sort of online multiplayer last year? He puffed up his chest made a lot of noise and threatened a lot of MMOs.

Then Blizz set their half demon half bloodelf lawyers on him and he disappeared. I doubt anything other than this will happen again.

I'm not entirely sure he disappeared, as much as the case is in mediation. Patent cases can take years and years to be sorted out. A big company stealing a little inventor's ideas and then tying him up in court for decades, or until he dies, is one of the big "little guy against big business" conflicts. It's inspired movies and such even.

If this was the one I was thinking of that involved the "Dreampark Corperation" I think there is a good chance they are going to win. Simply because Larry Niven's work was around back when it was considered pure insanity, including a lot of the stepping stones between the tech of the time and the VR he proposed. It seemed to be building a patent library (from what I was reading) of all kinds of related technologies and concepts, specifically to sell those ideas as technology developed and lead people into an era of VR gaming.

 

[Halceon]

What I'm baffled by is how they managed to patent something that was in extensive and intensive use for several years before that. Hell, Starcraft came out in 1998. What kind of idiots work at these patent bureaus?

 

[Psycho Cat Industries]

Are they suing the original starcraft?Released before the patent and therefore proving that these people never had the right to patent in the first place.