OnLive Granted Cloud Gaming Patent

[John Stalvern]

This will kill the market for cloud gaming before it's even born

 

[Gindil]

OnLive Granted Cloud Gaming Patent

Gaikai [http://www.onlive.com].

OnLive opened its virtual doors to the public in June but the development of the system, which handles videogame processing chores on remote servers and then fires the visuals back to any PC, netbook or its own "microconsole," has been ongoing for years. Founder Steve Perlman began work on the technology in late 2002 and filed for a patent in December of that same year, and last week it was finally granted.

Richard Doherty of the market analyst firm Envisioneering Group described it as a "landmark patent," noting that unlike many other technology patents, this one is based on real-world hardware. Furthermore, because of the huge and growing popular of gaming, Doherty said there will likely a lot of other companies lining up to license it.

Which naturally leads to the question of Gaikai, OnLive's rival cloud-gaming system that's currently undergoing beta testing. Perlman said "he has a history of trying to work out agreements" in such cases and claimed that despite holding over 100 patents, he's never sued anyone for infringement. On the other hand, these stakes are high; in August the company had an estimated valuation of $1.1 billion [http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/04/online-game-service-onlives-latest-filing-points-to-1-1-billion-valuation/] and is planning to expand into streaming movies next year.

"You can never time when a patent will arrive," Perlman told VentureBeat [http://venturebeat.com/2010/12/14/rivals-beware-onlive-says-it-has-received-a-fundamental-patent-on-cloud-based-games/]. "But it's gratifying to get the recognition. In my opinion, it is a very fundamental patent that covers an important part of the system."



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The story is more complicated [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101215/03321312283/shouldnt-patent-office-be-able-to-reject-bad-patent-application-real.shtml]

But what's a lot more telling is that the patent was "rejected" by the patent examiner not once, not twice, not three times, not four times, but five times before it was finally approved. However, the way the patent system works is that there's no such thing as a real rejection of a patent application. Even if there is something called a "final rejection" (the second rejection here was officially a "final rejection"), that's clearly misnamed, as the applicant is able to keep requesting new examinations, perhaps with adjustments to the patent, or after the applicant (or, more likely, a patent attorney they hired) argues that the patent should be approved.

I think it's time for a review of the patent system...

 

[Aurgelmir]

Morons don't even realize that they pretty much screwed themselves with this move. No one cares about cloud gaming and yet instead of making people interested in it they pull shit like this. So now people have the option to play games the way they're used to, or to use OnLive. And guess which one they'll chose.

My thought exactly.

They are also forcing competitors out of the market, which means the already big game industry gigants will find another clever solution, and On-Live will just be a faded memory in 10 years time.