
Three More MMO Developers Receive Letters from Treehouse Attorneys - bigstartups
http://gamepolitics.com/2013/07/10/three-more-mmo-developers-receive-letters-treehouse-attorneys
======
robomartin
This is the kind of crap that makes me not want to be in the software
business. Every time I read about a software patent incident and go off to
read the patent my jaw drops to the floor. None. Not one of the hundreds of
software patents I have ever reviewed should have been granted. Not one. These
things are not inventions. They are implementations based on choices and
decisions made by an individual or a team. The patent office is a lunatic
asylum. Unbelievable.

I really think we are at a point where the tech community needs to send a
super-strong message to both create awareness and catalyze rapid change. This
issue could be resolved in one session of Congress with the invalidation of
all software patents, current and future.

What to do? All web companies and game developers ought to agree on a date and
have a carefully crafted message displayed to every one of their users. The
message should be blocking. In other words, for a full minute (a minute of
silence for the killing of innovation) you cannot play your game, cannot
search the web, cannot use a service, etc.

Taken further, those who have the balls would suspend the entirety of their
services for an hour. How much of a stir would be created if Google, Facebook,
Youtube, Twitter, and others all displayed a page explaining the problem and
demanding action for a full hour. I can't think of a better way to force the
issue and quite literally have every human being on this planet and every
media outlet pickup the topic.

Everyone would learn about the damage being caused by software patents.
Politicians would have no choice but to seriously address the issue. I would
further suggest that this protest become a monthly event until such time as
the issue is dealt with sensibly.

Can this be organized? What else could we do? It really is time to force a
national dialog about this. How much more of this do you guys want to endure?

~~~
throwawaykf
Well... _all_ engineering is simply "implementations based on choices and
decisions made by an individual or a team"... What do you think inventions
should be, if not that?

At least your take on it is more in tune with reality than the common
misconception that patents cover "abstract ideas". The law views abstraction
differently than we do(and really, even the Supreme Court doesn't know how to
define it other than "we know it when we see it."

However, I'd like to know: what exactly is it that you think this patent
covers, and what about it do you find "unbelieveable"? Not that this is a
stellar patent, but from most of the comments on this thread, it is amply
clear most here don't know how patents work.

~~~
gamblor956
It's unbelievable because (1) the patent is in no way tied to a physical
system as required by US Patent law, (2) is merely a generic and obvious
collection of related activities and basic processes, and (3) is invalid based
on at least a decade of prior art that predates the patent.

Do you understand that the patent, as written, would lay claim to the basic
functionality of every MMO ever released? That is quite literally lays claim
to the character selection screens that have been around since Ultima Online
(as the patent limits itself to networked game, earlier SP games are not
relevant), which came out in 1997?

This isn't an old patent--it was filed _November 2010_.

~~~
throwawaykf
How did you determine exactly what it is that you think this patent covers? It
is a silly patent, but mostly for reasons that are opposite to what you seem
to believe.

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jmduke
To clarify: the Treehouse in this article is not
[http://teamtreehouse.com/](http://teamtreehouse.com/), the technology
education startup founded by Ryan Carson (whose posts make it to HN rather
often.)

~~~
jimrhoskins
This made me look twice, as I work for (Team) Treehouse. Coincidentally, the
last company I worked for was called Avatar International, so the company in
the article "Treehouse Avatar Technologies" made me do an extra double take.

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bigstartups
I've been contact by about a half dozen small game developers in addition to
myself. I can only assume the true number is many times that possibly in the
hundreds.

These scum have moved on from litigating agains the big players in the
industry to trying to extort the smallest and most vulnerable developers.

It's truly sickening...

~~~
tankbot
Disgusting, but it's only natural. The little guys don't have the resources to
fight it out in court and keep their heads above water, so trolls can extort a
small settlement or licensing fee from them. Ironically analogous to trolls in
fairy tales that would extort characters under dubious pretense.

Trolls are weak against fire and acid. Just sayin'.

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ddeck
The patent referred to:

[http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=H...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.htm&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=8,180,858.PN.&OS=PN/8,180,858&RS=PN/8,180,858)

~~~
Steko
_Filing date: November 30, 2010

A character having a plurality of attributes is created by a network user
while within a character-enabled network site.

Each attribute is defined by at least one of either audio data and/or visual
image data and is selected by the user from a plurality of attributes
presented to the user through a user interface.

The combination of attributes defines a persona for the character. At least
one of either an audio presentation and/or a visual image presentation is
provided to the user interface. The presentations presented are selected from
a plurality of presentations based on the character's persona.

Data related to character attributes are stored in a database. One or more of
the presentations presented to the user may be interactive, in that it allows
for the user to make choices.

In response to a user's interaction with the interactive presentation,
additional audio presentation and/or a visual image presentation is provided
to the user interface. Data indicative of user interaction with the
interactive presentations is also stored in a database._

What a fucking joke.

~~~
notahacker
Trust me, it gets worse:

 _All in all, contemporary web sites are static in nature in that they fail to
take into consideration the individuality of their visitors and instead
present to each visitor a substantially identical audio /visual experience. As
a result, visitors to contemporary web sites often become bored with the web
site in a relatively short time thereby reducing visitor time on a web site
and the possibility of frequent, repeat visits by the user._

It's slightly worrying that patent lawyers and people working at the patent
office don't seem to have had access to the internet recently.

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smegel
> "Methods for Presenting Data Over a Network Based Network User Choices and
> Collecting Real-time Data Related to Said Choices."

Maybe someone should just patent the general method for the operation of a
computer by feeding it a series of instructions combined with user input and a
way to present output, and we can all go and start new careers.

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rdl
I wonder if it would prejudice the courts against you later if your response
were simply a timestamped picture of a very X-rated "furry" or other x-rated
avatar from an early-1990s MUD or something.

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Hoff
From 1994, if it helps...

"ACM Flight Simulator, revision 4.7

What is ACM? \------------

ACM is a LAN-oriented, multiplayer aerial combat simulation. My main design
objective was to provide source code that could be easily compiled and
executed on a wide variety of platforms. To that end, acm is written entirely
in C, exploiting the programming features of Unix, X11, and the BSD socket
interface.

Players engage in air to air combat against one another using heat seeking
missiles and cannons.

ACM is implemented as two programs. The first, named "acm", is a small program
that, when invoked, starts a flight session on a given workstation.

The second component, named "acms", is a server process that manages the
multiplayer environment. It also manages the flight simulation and display
management that is required. Most players will prefer to run the acms process
on a back-end server system on their local area network. Players at client
workstations can then invoke the acm program to begin play."

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Lasher
I've been playing and running text-based MMOS (MUDs) that do this same thing
since the early 1990s. Probably a naive question but isn't there anything that
can be done to void these by proving that this was being done on the internet
for long before they came around?

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josephwegner
Man, I used to love both Minions of Mirth and A Tale in the Desert. The
management at Prairie Games had kinda gone to hell, but the original founders
were really pretty awesome people.

Such a bummer to see great games get bullied.

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wyck
Someone needs to send Judge Otis D. after Lerner, David, Littenberg, Krumholz,
& Menlik, LLP.

Ref: [http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/06/does-prenda-believe-in-
no-...](http://www.popehat.com/2013/05/06/does-prenda-believe-in-no-win-
scenarios-because-judge-wright-just-gave-them-one/)

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snowwrestler
Treehouse? These guys or someone different?

[http://teamtreehouse.com/](http://teamtreehouse.com/)

~~~
ddeck
No, these guys:

[https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/cc/CorporationsCanada/fdrlCrpDt...](https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/cc/CorporationsCanada/fdrlCrpDtls.html?corpId=7984707)

