Another virtual world patent

[Northern]

So, I just read that Worlds.com just got another patent approved.
What are your thoughts on this? Many people on this board build their own 3D worlds, and so this is something that could affect us all.
Also, does anybody know how they got to register several almost identical patents? I mean, I read some of the patents there and it looks like many of them are extremely similar. What the hell???
The first patent should expire in 2016, so what they get to extend their patents by re registering them?

Share your thoughts...

[Bleakwise]

New Zealand is the only civilized country in the western world it seems.

This whole "I saw her first!" system is nothing short of barbaric. Also, this is why China is 20 years ahead of the west when it comes to technology, what? you thought the Great Wall of China was to keep us OUT? Silly, it's to keep China's (amazingly innovative) patent violations in! Although you'd never hear that from our own media overlords. This is also why there are relativly very VERY few software development companies compared to other industries. The amount of patents (600,000 by next year, 700,000 by 2015, 1,300,000 by 2020) has made the risk of developing/publishing software FAR greater than the reward. For example, I live in an urban area with over half a million people, and there is not a single software house here, I hear the situation is similar elsewhere, and no, SQL services don't count. If you're a software developer, be sure your publisher has a portfolio of patents to defend itself, but even that won't help you against non-inventors/"trolls" that won't play ball because their primary function is litigation.

US Patent Lawyers would make you believe "stealing" ideas is something like knocked off BRAND NAME hand bags or BRAND NAME sun-glasses. I seriously cringe when I hear "our patents have helped innovators create online games for years", followed by a claim that they actually research or develop anything, I never in my wildest dreams could imagine such vain hubris. I would love to licence their software. Anyone who writes software for a living knows ideas are a dime a dozen, even good ones, it's whether you can actually implement them or not that takes skill/talent ingenuity.

Short of banning the entire patent system, I would say that the only way to make sane the situation would be to require a copyright on the said invention before it can be patented. That would at least guarantee that you actually invented something before staking your claim to it.

[mkultra333]

Wow, I hadn't heard about NZ getting rid of software patents. That's awesome. Maybe there's hope after all.

[Klaim]

Wow, I hadn't heard about NZ getting rid of software patents. That's awesome. Maybe there's hope after all.

In France we don't have really patent trolls but I hope they will get rid of software patents too as it also have a cost in time and money and frankly it's only building problems.

[Bleakwise]

Here's the Ars article.
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013 ... e-patents/

One of the best IT journals out there.

The Comments are interesting.

[Zonder]

From the UK Patent office

Patenting computer-implemented inventions (software patents)

The law does not allow patents to be granted for some types of innovation. Some computer-implemented inventions are patentable whilst others are not. This is because software straddles the technological and business worlds. It uses technology, that is, computers, but often for non-technical purposes. Whether a computer-implemented invention is patentable depends on the contribution the invention makes. For example, if it provides improved control of a car braking system, it is likely to be patentable, but if it merely provides an improved accounting system, it is probably not patentable.

There is extensive case law about computer-implemented inventions. The Intellectual Property Office is bound by these cases in its own decision making. The Intellectual Property Office practice is based on a Court of Appeal judgment (Aerotel/Macrossan) in 2006 which lays down the basic test to be applied.

The law on what is patentable is the same across Europe, so if something is unpatentable under UK law, it will generally also be unpatentable elsewhere in Europe, although individual countries may has slightly varying interpretations of the law. The same does not apply to countries outside Europe. In the US and Japan, the laws allow a wider range of computer-implemented inventions to be patented.

[mkultra333]

AFAIK Australia allows software patents, and is more or less as awful as the US system.

http://www.abc.net.au/catapult/askexpert/s1619309.htm

Q: To what extent does Australia have software patents? – Andrew

A: It depends on what you mean by 'software'. Source code (or computer program code) isn't covered by the patent system, it's usually protected by copyright or trade secrets. On the other hand, you can patent broad definitions of software that describe methods of operating computer systems or other computational methods.

In these patents, the details of software implementation – the source code or machine code –aren't required. Methods covered by software patents may include steps that are implemented by a computer program, or an interface with other computers or people. Patents that embody methods such as e-commerce patents and business method patents have been available in Australia for 15 years.

Applications for software patents are treated the same way as applications for patents for other kinds of inventions, in other words, they need to pass the same novelty, inventive step and other patentability tests to be granted a patent.

My favourite software patent was for lossless compression algorithms that guaranteed to reduce any file by at least one bit. http://gailly.net/05533051.html
Which means you could take the compressed file, and then recompress it and remove one more bit, and then recompress that and remove one more bit, and on and on until your file was just 1 bit in size. All losslessly! Brilliant stuff. (Actually they weasel out of that by ignoring "negligible" bits used for "housekeeping"... which means it doesn't do what it claims to do.)