OnLive awarded important cloud gaming patent

@sigma8
The fact that the patent system has given rise to an extremely large IP law industry is telling. When you have more lawyers than inventors, it means you've screwed up. (unless the goal was to give lawyers something to do)

@sigma8

Yeah, most patents are terrible. Unfortunately we've reached a point where companies are basically forced to patent everything to protect themselves.

@sigma8 That's a very good point.

@sigma8 You mean like software?

http://nosoftwarepatents.org

You're not the only one who thinks so, unfortunately, the lines between software and methodology get skewed quite easily.

@sigma8

Copyright is abused worse than patent. I Would like to see that corrected as well.

It should be put BACK to the original 14 - 28 years. This 70 years + the life of the author is ridiculous.

Most of the copyright problems would be solved simply by doing that.

@sigma8

Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow?

@sigma8 Just so you know, I hold the patent on the three paragraph, thoughtful internet comment. I'll allow it this time.

@Ordeith Totally agree. The reason copyright/patents were created was to incentivize inventors, and it's totally worthwhile to do so. It's no fun coming up with something when some bully company with more resources can just take your idea and commercialize it. However, it's gotten to the point where even having an idea at all is more of a legal exercise than anything else. Going to market without having an army of lawyers check the archives for nearly 100 years worth of still-valid copyrights and (last 20ish) years of patents is very onerous to the invention process.

I would also argue it scarcely helps those it sought to protect. Resting on its laurels is basically signing a corporate death warrant. It encourages stagnation, and stagnation kills companies. Two examples of IP-centric companies that immediately spring to mind are SCO and Rambus. SCO is teetering at the brink, and Rambus is doing much better, but it's basically on multiple-life support systems. They're not actually DOING anything. They're just getting money by preventing others from doing stuff. I'm not sure how that increases "innovation".

@sigma8 After all that, I should add that it's nice that he's "kinda sorta" pledging not to enforce these patents. Looks more like a defensive play (which, of course, it's sad that he felt it was necessary). So, good on him.

@sigma8 stats please. There have been about 73,000 people registered to submit patents to the Patent Office since the beginning of the certification (which is decades old). I would think that there are more than 73,000 people inventing things on a daily basis.

As for the comment that the 20 year term, actually, it was set in 1995 to be 20 years from the earliest claimed filing date, not 17 years from the issuance of the patent which was the old system. It actually shorted the period for patents because under the old system, you could keep extending your patent rights by 17 years every time you got a new patent. Now, your patent term runs out 20 years from the earliest patent you filed on that technology.

@CamelCamelCamel as soon as you allow one person you allow them all. this would hurt you in court if you tried to enforce it in the future.

@pmiddy
Okay, I'll see if I can find some stats that show that there are more than 70K IP attorneys. According to some google search I just did, there are over a million lawyers in the US--certainly not all of them practice patent law. That stat seems harder to find. However, it still seems pretty ridiculous to me. And 17 years vs 20 is ...something, but I was thinking it should be in the single digits. If it's going to take you 10 years to ramp up, maybe we could have special slowbie patents that allow others to copy UNTIL the patent holder releases something. (Silly, I know)

One interesting patent story is the one of asymetric key encryption. That was patented until 10 years ago or so, and essentially delayed commerce on the web until it expired. I know it's one of those "what if" scenarios, but seriously, all the great SSL stuff we do? It used to be much more tightly controlled by a small company just sitting on it, hoping to make money by charging massive prices for it, instead of going for the mass market. I'm sure they made some good money with it, but it slowed down progress overall. It can take 10 years for people to come up with non-infringing alternatives! Imagine how the music scene would have been if Fraunhofer had really clamped down on mp3. We don't always have ready alternatives for stuff.

@Jawmuncher

How's the performance for the games you have tried?

@Vidikron the performance has been awesome for me. i played most of the games so far and own nba 2k11 and unreal. online play is fine also and the games are in 1080p and look as good as playstation 3 games. i highly recommend it if you have decent internet. i have comcast regular service here in south NJ. i think i have about 8mg/s... look the console and controller its worth it

Having a patent and successfully defending a patent are two different things, especially if you're bankrupt or out of business.

@Draco84 SEGA Channel? That was a download service, it stored the game data on the adapter cartridge until you reset / powered off.

@Draco84 Nope. The Sega Channel would download the games to the RAM in the cartridge. It was a one-way transmission whereas OnLive receives your input and transmits back to you the resulting actions.

@Draco84

No but it surely treads on every other remote desktop solution on the planet. I don't understand why the fact that it has "games" as the subject matter makes it unique enough to be patentable.

@GeoffSchultz

Well, you can also patent gameplay mechanics.

@GeoffSchultz It doesn't - read the claims. You have to do something pretty specific that the prior art doesn't teach (I'm guessing - I haven't read the file history):

4. A set-top box comprising:
an interface that connects to a game card that provides a game platform to run a software video game, the game card including a processor, a memory and a graphics engine, the game card being operable to output high twitch-action video game data through the interface;

a unit to process the high twitch-action video game data for output to a display device;

a wireless transceiver to receive the software video game via a wireless network;

a compression unit for compressing the high twitch-action video game data with a latency of less than approximately 80 ms, but greater than about 5 ms; and

wherein the wireless transceiver is further operable to wirelessly transmit the compressed high twitch-action video game data to at least one remote user, and to receive commands from the at least one remote user, via the wireless network, the remote user being located beyond a transmission range of the wireless transceiver.

@Shalabi

It depends... I actually have the fortune of living near one of their data centers, I've been playing through Splinter Cell Conviction and The Wheelman and have no complaints.

At the least though, OnLive HAS a product that they actually SELL. That makes them better than all the patent trolls out there.