Palm Sued Over Multi Player Gaming Patent

This is a rather confusing suit... Palm does not even ship any devices with games installed by default.

What I think the suit is possibly referring to is 2 player games via IR or Bluetooth.

The Tungsten|T comes with MagicDogs Hearts, which can be played multi-player via Bluetooth.

LOL!

To add some more perspective:

Playing multiplayer games on two PDAs over an ad-hoc network is covered by their patent. How about two PocketPC PDAs? How about two ultra-slim laptops over the same WiFi network? What about two beefy laptops over WiFi? Which brings me to my point: all LAN parties are covered by their patent.

"This one's sure to go over.... next thing, we'll all have to stop breathing because Oxygen Inc., copyrighted that in the 30's..... so stupid."

Criticisms of patent law would look a whole lot more believable and authoritative if people who make them actually had a minimal understanding of the differences between "patents", "copyrights", and "trademarks".

This is one of those "retarded patents". I think there's prior art in hooking up a few GameBoy(tm) together.

It's really sad all these stupid patents are going to kill innovation.

Just because you can't see how they could win it doesn't prevent them from filing.

There is lots of money to be made simply with settlements.

If you look at the patent - technically chess or checkers over the phone wouldn't apply because thers no screen (yes they got THAT specific - there SO CLEVER!!!). So we can all rest easy knowing their lawyers won't come knocking...yet. Absurd. I worry that the judges in these cases are technologically illerate to the point that they don't 'get' that this is insane and that this was just the implementation of exiting technology with a new one - NONE of this owned by these guys.. You change the bottom layer (the hardware layer) of a networking protocol stack and suddenly a patent kicks in - even if the game had been created before the hardware existed to make it 'wireless'. I hope the judge tosses these guys out on their asses.

the checkerboard/chessboard is the screen.

When I was in Jr. High in 1995 I had a handheld SEGA "PDA", it had 1 game on it, but if you knew someone else w/ the same device you could play it w/ them useing the IR port. How can they patent something in 1997 that was out in 1995?

"If cop a feel I must, than cop a feel I shall." - Professor Farnsworth, Futurama

"I don't get why the USPTO would issue this."

The USPTO has long ago stopped doing significant quality control on patents. They basically issue them and let the courts sort out the good ones from the bad ones. That would be OK if the courts actually caught up with reality and didn't effectively give issued patents a presumption of validity.

>How can they patent something in 1997 that was out in 1995?

It can easily take 3 years for a patent to issue from time of filing, and in the US you have 1 year after invention in which to file, so if 1997 is the issue year, it could have been "invented" in 1993.

In any case, the claim goes into detail about how the clocks are syncronized between the two devices and I doubt that there is any clock syncronization going on in most Palm games. The Palm is certainly not built to be a game machine, and if you even try to argue that it isn't built to syncronize clocks between two devices, the game software itself would have to do that, but then you'd have to go after the software makers, but then the software makers didn't build a devices so it doesn't really fit, etc.

I think their Cybico suit has a better chance, and I have no idea if they do any kind of "clock" sync.

But it isn't really about if they should win or not in these cases. They sue because they hope that Palm will think it is cheaper to settle than to fight.

I'm not a lawyer either, but an IT professional (sounds nice ;). Wouldn't they have to sue the people who made WiFi, TCP/IP and every other multiplayer game on the market?

The only thing I can see coming out of this patent is if you made up your own wireless system for transmitting data. If you use standards that predate this patent, you can't be accused of breaching it.

The only way this patent could have gotten through the system was if the person reading it/adding it to the USPTO database didn't understand technology. As someone already said, in it's broadest sense, this patent would cover any game that you can play over WiFi. So if I play NWN over WiFi I'm breaching this patent.

Also, I've never seen a "Interactive multiple player game system and method of playing a game between at least two players" come out of Palm. All I've seen is small little boxes with an OS made by another company on it. A hardware maker can't be sued for what someone else does with software on that device. The patent describes a "game system" not a handheld device. I would never call my Clie a "game system". My Gameboy and Playstation are "game systems".

It seems to be that people are sueing Palm left, right and center. If anything they should target the OS and software makers, not the hardware makers.

qurgh

If you read the claims they seem closely tied to a common clock. This sounds more like a non-real time system: the players get updated on a fixed schedule that is slower than game play. When you read a patent you have to read the fine details of the claims. The article here may say company patents wireless games or some such, but its the fine details of the patent claims that is really telling. You can't patent a broad idea, only a specific invention. There may very well be a vakid narrow invention in their patent that is valid. This narrow invention, however, may have no impact on many wireless p2p games.

Where I am confused is how they could have a leg to stand on against Palm? I don't see Palm selling network games. It's like filing suit against Dell because someone is playing pirated music on a Dell. (Oh, wait that's the kind of stunts the movie and music industry might try, but that's off topic). Anybody want to take a shot at why they have standing against Palm? Where is the prima facia case?

(PS I'm an engineer not a lawer, but I have been through the patent mill more than once)

I'm not a lawyer ... but I'm not a lawyer. :-)

Every lame copmany with a bunch of lawyers are suing somebody over patent infringement these days. It's getting ridiculous. I hope Palm will crash them.

Katten Muchin Zavis is a large well respected chicago law firm. If they are bringing this suit on behalf of peer to peer, I don't think we can regard this as frivolous. Large law firms usually don't take the same risks/cases that smaller and independant plaintiff litigation firms will take.