Patent 4,734,690

Quoting from monthly IGDA's newsletter (hoping not infringing any
copyright ;) ):

It's seems very important because if the patent is valid no modern 3D 
can be done without royalties...

	Daniele

> ===============================
1: Patent '690 Prior Art Search
> ===============================
There is an ongoing patent litigation
> case in the Eastern District of Texas of interest to all developers
> because of how broadly the Plaintiff appears to want to apply the
> claims of the patent.  In this case, American Video Graphics, L.P.
> ("Plaintiff") has sued sixteen game publishers, alleging that these
> defendants infringe AVG's U.S. Patent No. 4,734,690, "Method and
> Apparatus for Spherical Panning." See Jim Charne's commentary in this
> month's Famous Last Words: 
> http://www.igda.org/columns/lastwords/lastwords_Mar05.php
> 
> Plaintiff has identified over 1000 accused games, which Plaintiff
> alleges infringe their '690 patent.  The '690 patent abstract states:
> "A graphics display terminal performs a pan operation with respect to
> a view motion center to effectuate spherical panning, thereby
> providing perspective and non-perspective views.  Three dimensional
> instructions stored in terminal memory are re-transformed in
> accordance with a panned direction..." Full patent details available
> at the USPTO: http://tinyurl.com/62sjj
> 
> More specifically, we are looking for prior art (textbooks,
> references, articles, or other publications) with a date of
> publication of before July 23, 1983 which would invalidate the '690
> patent.  This art must cover the claims of the patent, including a
> method and system which defines a "first" and a "second
> three-dimensional coordinate modeling space"; with a "viewing space
> being movable at a selected radial distance around a selected
> reference point in the modeling space;" and effects a "transform of
> the coordinates of the object to the viewing space and to a
> two-dimensional coordinate screen space."  Further, ideally the prior
> art would also provide a method whereby the user can change the
> pitch, yaw or roll of the viewing space, and also specify a radial
> distance at which the object may be viewed.
> 
> If you know of any such prior art, please contact the IGDA's IP
> Rights Committee at [email protected] as soon as possible. 
> http://www.igda.org/committees/ipr.php


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Author: Daniele Benegiamo
  INET: [email protected]

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