Re: Patent 4,734,690
Leath Muller <[email protected]>
| Newsgroups | gmane.games.devel.opengl |
|---|---|
| Organization | Fat City Network Services, San Diego, California |
| Message-ID | <[email protected]> |
I thought the same thing when I first read it - but it fails me to see how they come up with a list of > 1000 games that have broken the patent... I wonder if the application of the patent to current software techniques has been unrealistically broadened. It also seemed to be an, ummm, consolidation of hacks from various other software techniques known about in the 80's, into a single broad patent... Also, it seems weird that he would know just _how_ those engines are doing all their 3D math - he would, as I see it, have to have the source to each of those games to prove they break his patent. There are a _lot_ of hacks that give the same result (or similar) but do things differently for various performance reasons... I would be very suprised if they successfully sued. But the guy doing the suing is probably just after some quick settlements out of court to make some cash... > I'm no patent expert - but this patent doesn't worry me. If it truly > bites us all then it's trivial to find prior art - and if it doesn't > apply to modern games then it doesn't affect what we're doing *NOW*. > > That may not be much of a comfort to the people who WERE doing that > kind of stuff in the past. > > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > The second law of Frisbee throwing states: "Never precede any maneuver > by a comment more predictive than "Watch this!"...it turns out that > this also applies to writing Fragment Shaders. > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Steve Baker (817)619-2657 (Vox/Vox-Mail) > L3Com/Link Simulation & Training (817)619-2466 (Fax) > Work: [email protected] http://www.link.com > Home: [email protected] http://www.sjbaker.org > > ----- FAQ and OpenGL Resources at: > http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/9956/OpenGL > -- Leath Muller Application Developer, Spatial Data Centre Science, Technology and Information Group Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority Phone: +61 7 4750 0858 Fax: +61 7 4772 6093 Mobile: +61 0409 260 267 eMail: [email protected] ----- FAQ and OpenGL Resources at: http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Hills/9956/OpenGL -- Author: Leath Muller INET: [email protected] Fat City Hosting, San Diego, California -- http://www.fatcity.com --------------------------------------------------------------------- To REMOVE yourself from this mailing list, send an E-Mail message to: [email protected] (note EXACT spelling of 'ListGuru') and in the message BODY, include a line containing: UNSUB OPENGL-GAMEDEV-L (or the name of mailing list you want to be removed from). You may also send the HELP command for other information (like subscribing).