Worlds v. NCSoft lawsuit; your opinions? - Game|Gravity

punchbunny · 12-31-2008, 01:20 PM

Taken from virtualworldnews.com:

Quote:

On Christmas Eve, Worlds.com filed a complaint against NCsoft for infringing on its virtual world and MMO patent. Worlds.com, which was one of the early virtual world developers from the '90s, made waves earlier this month when it announced that it had selected an intellectual property firm to defend its two patents related to scaling virtual spaces and enabling users to interact and chat in 3D environments.

Specifically, the suit claims that NCsoft has infringed on patent 7,181,690, "System and Method for Enabling Users to Interact in a Virtual Space" through its games, including City of Heroes, City of Villains, Dungeon Runners, Exteel, Guild Wars, Lineage, Lineage II, and Tablula Rasa.

The complaint seeks to recover damages for the infringement and asks that NCsoft be prevented from infringing on patent 690, which covers scaling. Based on NCsoft's headquarters in Austin as a source of the infringement, the complaint was filed in the Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division.

Basically, some failed online virtual reality company that started out in 2000 (during the emergence of the MMORPG craze) has apparently had a patent for quite some time that declares it was their idea to "allow users to connect within a virtual space" and they are suing NCSoft for "violation" of the patent.

In my opinion: They just want attention, even if it is bad attention. If they lose they will always be known as the guys who tried to start bringing down the MMORPG world; if they win.... well, I would rather not think about what would happen if they win... either way, they think they are just the smuggest people in the online universe.

(I'd also like to note that they did this on christmas eve... I mean really... how low can you get?)

So what are your opinions other than "this is stupid"?

EDIT: I really need to get some sleep; the topic should be "Worlds v. NCSoft lawsuit; your opinions?" Worlds.com is the name of the company who is suing NCSoft, not Virtual Worlds.

ghost · 12-31-2008, 08:48 PM

This is 'probably' stupid. Still M$, Novell and our all time favorites the RIAA hasve gone up with more rediculous sounding claims than this.

Still without seeing the 'core' of what is being claimed I can't make a judgement. Is it possiblt that NCSoft has actually stolen a bit of proprietry code, or even marketing from Worlds.com If so worlds might have a real claim. I doubt they are going to make much out of it though. Other than some severely polarised attention.

ShadowRG · 01-16-2009, 05:35 AM

this is basicly what its all about (copy paste from their website)

Worlds technology is a highly productive and easy-to-use integrated client/server technology suite that provides a development platform to create, distribute, maintain and use multi-user virtual environments of exceptional quality and performance over the Internet or private TCP/IP networks. Worlds Gamma's integration of a user's 2D Web browser (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer or FireFox) into its own application gives Gamma the ability to deliver HTML, audio and video content all within the 3D Worlds Website. Thus, any popular features that are seen in 2D Websites can be easily integrated into Worlds.

Patent
Worlds has been granted U.S patent 6,219,045 for multi-server technology for 3D applications, which is Worlds’ core technology. The description of the patent is as follows:

“The present invention provides a highly scalable architecture for a three dimensional, multi-user, interactive virtual world system. In a preferred embodiment a plurality of users interact in the three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where each user executes a client process to view a virtual world from the perspective of that user. The virtual world shows Avatars representing the other users who are neighbors of the user viewing the virtual world. In order that the view can be updated to reflect the motion of the remote user's Avatar, motion information is transmitted to a central server process that provides position updates to client processes for neighbors of the user at that client process. The client process also users an environment database to determine which background objects to render as well as to limit the number of displayable Avatars to a maximum number of Avatars displayable by that client.”

they make it out to believe they are the first US company to make the server client stuff for MMO's. what freaking grandure they have.
edit: or maybe they made the client/serve stuff that NCsoft games use, which would be more likely and a good basis for them to sue. but why not do it earlier then when they did.

GP. · 02-10-2009, 04:30 PM

Like you said Shadow, if they use their coding/server information then yes Worlds.com has all right sue NCsoft, but if they're suing for the idea then there's no way they'll win the lawsuits especially when big companies like Blizzard-Activition jump in on this.

ghost · 02-10-2009, 08:29 PM

There is no way they will win there Lawsuit. It's more than likely some kind of desperate publicity stunt.

For those into conspiracy theories its a desperate publicty stunt, from the evil overlords at NCSoft to get them out of financial trouble...

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12-31-2008, 08:48 PM	#2 (permalink)
ghost revenant Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 454	This is 'probably' stupid. Still M$, Novell and our all time favorites the RIAA hasve gone up with more rediculous sounding claims than this. Still without seeing the 'core' of what is being claimed I can't make a judgement. Is it possiblt that NCSoft has actually stolen a bit of proprietry code, or even marketing from Worlds.com If so worlds might have a real claim. I doubt they are going to make much out of it though. Other than some severely polarised attention.

01-16-2009, 05:35 AM	#3 (permalink)
ShadowRG Atom Join Date: Jan 2009 Posts: 19	this is basicly what its all about (copy paste from their website) Worlds technology is a highly productive and easy-to-use integrated client/server technology suite that provides a development platform to create, distribute, maintain and use multi-user virtual environments of exceptional quality and performance over the Internet or private TCP/IP networks. Worlds Gamma's integration of a user's 2D Web browser (e.g. Microsoft Internet Explorer or FireFox) into its own application gives Gamma the ability to deliver HTML, audio and video content all within the 3D Worlds Website. Thus, any popular features that are seen in 2D Websites can be easily integrated into Worlds. Patent Worlds has been granted U.S patent 6,219,045 for multi-server technology for 3D applications, which is Worlds’ core technology. The description of the patent is as follows: “The present invention provides a highly scalable architecture for a three dimensional, multi-user, interactive virtual world system. In a preferred embodiment a plurality of users interact in the three-dimensional, computer-generated graphical space where each user executes a client process to view a virtual world from the perspective of that user. The virtual world shows Avatars representing the other users who are neighbors of the user viewing the virtual world. In order that the view can be updated to reflect the motion of the remote user's Avatar, motion information is transmitted to a central server process that provides position updates to client processes for neighbors of the user at that client process. The client process also users an environment database to determine which background objects to render as well as to limit the number of displayable Avatars to a maximum number of Avatars displayable by that client.” they make it out to believe they are the first US company to make the server client stuff for MMO's. what freaking grandure they have. edit: or maybe they made the client/serve stuff that NCsoft games use, which would be more likely and a good basis for them to sue. but why not do it earlier then when they did.

02-10-2009, 04:30 PM	#4 (permalink)
GP. Adminstrator Join Date: Oct 2008 Posts: 92	Like you said Shadow, if they use their coding/server information then yes Worlds.com has all right sue NCsoft, but if they're suing for the idea then there's no way they'll win the lawsuits especially when big companies like Blizzard-Activition jump in on this.

02-10-2009, 08:29 PM	#5 (permalink)
ghost revenant Join Date: Nov 2008 Location: Australia Posts: 454	There is no way they will win there Lawsuit. It's more than likely some kind of desperate publicity stunt. For those into conspiracy theories its a desperate publicty stunt, from the evil overlords at NCSoft to get them out of financial trouble...