Classes Trolls Can Be In EQ: Shadowknight, Shaman, Warrior, Patent Lawyer

Posted on November 29, 2010 by Scott Jennings| 17 Comments

Eric Heimburg at Elder Game is pissed at SOE. And not for the usual “you broke my SWG” topic.

Are you kidding me, SOE? You guys are a huge bunch of pricks. You patented my technique. I know you guys have a long history of basically using money to destroy competition, because hey, you have money, why not?

Because it’s wrong, and you guys are shit, that’s why.

To be fair, patent trolling is not limited to SOE, but that still doesn’t excuse the practice of predatory legal wrangling. I am reminded of one game industry figure who was inordinately proud of the fact that he was able to file a trademark on “alternate Earth”, thus possibly shutting down, among other things, Harry Turtledove’s entire career.

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  • http://www.facebook.com/noelwalling Noel Walling

    Also, to be fair, Eric shoots his own argument that this was ‘his’ in the foot:

    “The weirdest part of this patent is that it’s not even entirely my prior art. I solidified it, extrapolated a bit, and devised tools and techniques to work with it in a uniform way. But the underlying idea (of using meta-characters in strings to assist in string generation) is quite old… antique even.”

    It’s pretty egotistical to think that he was the only engineer thinking about that problem – and further, that everyone reads his posts. I mean, I was working on a project where we used this method of localizing (EQII), and I certainly don’t recall ever hearing our engineers mention this while working out the issues involved with localizing in 8 gazillion languages. =)

    That’s not to say it didn’t happen, but it’s crazy to think that only he can solve localization issues when he admits that the method was around before.

  • Scott Jennings

    Well, I don’t think he particularly wants ownership as much as to highlight how stupid the patent itself is. I mean, using tokens in localised text is a really, really basic concept, and far predates SOE’s patent. Ultima Online even got lazy one expansion and just moved their item system to a tokenized system without bothering to parse it, so their players got to watch all their “Deadly Claymore of Vanquishing” transform to “claymore [1:4:2:89]” before their eyes.

  • http://Website Arkazon

    My brother was killed by a claymore 1:4:2:89. Thanks for tearing open old wounds…

  • http://stabbedup.blogspot.com/ Stabs

    I don’t think it’s being egotistical to think that MMO professionals in 2003 were reading articles on Gamasutra about MMO localization.

    How many people anywhere at that time were writing articles from a professional point of view? There weren’t even all that many professionals in the industry then.

  • http://Website Amaranthar


    Arkazon:

    My brother was killed by a claymore 1:4:2:89. Thanks for tearing open old wounds…

    It’s OK, SOE’s going to file an infringement against him for using that claymore 1:4:2:89.

  • http://geldonsgaming.blogspot.com geldonyetich

    Not only is what he is describing not all that new, but I don’t think “localization” is all that tied up in pronoun string identification, so both attempts at patent trolling are doing it wrong.

  • http://www.independentcreator.com Matt

    “I mean, using tokens in localised text is a really, really basic concept, and far predates SOE’s patent.”

    Yup. I wrote some code that did that in 2001, and that was based on an old technique someone else described to me. Bad trolls.

  • http://Website Matt

    He even states near the end he doesn’t care who owns it, he just wants to able to use it. Which is why the patent system is so fucked up.

  • http://Website Guy

    The more attention patent trolling gets, the better. This might even be a reason for software jobs to leave the US.

  • http://Website Aufero

    Doing a basic search for obviousness or prior art before approving a patent has apparently gone out of style at the patent office.

    Although to be fair, they’d probably need a lot more funding (like a couple of orders of magnitude) to make that a reality. The patent system in this country is ludicrously broken.

  • http://www.facebook.com/noelwalling Noel Walling

    Absolutely. The patents for software are brutal, and discourage competition because of their structure, and their initial cost to put through the system.

    But ranting at a company for putting a patent through is ridiculous – because if they don’t patent it, someone else will. And then they’ll have to pay that someone else money.

    What we need are better patent laws, ones that are written now for technology of this era.

  • http://www.facebook.com/noelwalling Noel Walling

    It just so happens that XKCD managed to touch on this at just about the perfect time!

    http://xkcd.com/827/

  • http://Website sinij

    Method patents stupidity is not limited to SOE or mmorpgs.

  • http://Website Aufero


    Noel Walling:

    It just so happens that XKCD managed to touch on this at just about the perfect time!
    http://xkcd.com/827/

    Hilarious as usual for XKCD, but not at all the same thing.

  • http://Website Not One Of Us

    I’m sort of reminded of the Creative / Carmack Reverse thing around the time of Doom 3.

  • http://Website Gx1080

    So, they patented a piss-easy programming solution to text-based applications?

    Bullshit.

  • http://www.facebook.com/downsj2 Jason Downs

    MUDs had string substitution based conjugation since at least 1991, probably early– it’s a very obvious concept. It’s amusing at some level that the person angry with SOE was simply rewording prior art from within the same genre of game.

    The patent, of course, should never have been granted both because of a literal wealth of prior art and because of how obvious it is.