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EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
| From: | EFF Press <press-AT-eff.org> | |
| To: | presslist-AT-eff.org | |
| Subject: | EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent | |
| Date: | Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:38:40 -0800 | |
| Message-ID: | <47A1F990.8010007@eff.org> |
Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release For Immediate Release: Thursday, January 31, 2008 Contact: Emily Berger Intellectual Property Fellow Electronic Frontier Foundation emily@eff.org +1 415 436-9333 x112 Paul Grewal Partner Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder pgrewal@daycasebeer.com +1 408 873-0110 EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent Illegitimate Patent Chills Innovation in Multi-Player Internet Games San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is challenging a bogus online gaming patent threatening small businesses and innovators of multi-player Internet games. Sheldon F. Goldberg was awarded the illegitimate patent for the "method and system of playing games on a network," and claims to own rights in all online gaming systems that use tournament-style play, advertising, and have real-time updates of ladder-rankings in multi-player games. Goldberg has used this bogus patent to coerce licensing fees from numerous small businesses, demanding payments that are excessive yet less than potential litigation. In a reexamination request filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today, EFF and Paul Grewal and Brad Waugh of Day Casebeer Madrid & Batchelder show that the technology covered by the bogus patent was used extensively by other online gaming companies before Goldberg made his claim. "The Internet has allowed small businesses and individuals seeking to develop new technologies to operate on a level playing field with larger corporations," said EFF Intellectual Property Fellow Emily Berger. "This equality is threatened by those who seek to procure patents from our government that they were never entitled to hold in the first place." One of the key sources of information in EFF's reexamination request came from Netrek, one of the first online multi-player games. Netrek is primarily written in open-source software, and its code development has been archived online. "Real innovation by others suffers in light of meritless claims like those in Mr. Goldberg's patent," said Paul Grewal. "We are confident that the Patent Office will carefully review the arguments we have presented in our petition." Students from the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School also carried out extensive research for the reexamination request, helping locate much of the critical evidence of prior use of technologies covered by Goldberg's patent. This reexamination request is part of EFF's Patent Busting Project, which combats the chilling effects bad patents have on public and consumer interests. So far, the project has killed one patent covering a system and method of creating digital recordings of live performances. Three more reexaminations are underway by the USPTO due to the Patent Busting Project's efforts. For the full reexamination request: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/sheldon/reexam/goldberg_r... For more on the Goldberg Patent: http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/patent.php?p=sheldon For more on the Patent Busting Project: http://w2.eff.org/patent/ For this release: http://www.eff.org/press/archives/2008/01/30 About EFF The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil liberties organization working to protect rights in the digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and challenges industry and government to support free expression and privacy online. EFF is a member-supported organization and maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world at http://www.eff.org/ -end- _______________________________________________ presslist mailing list https://falcon.eff.org/mailman/listinfo/presslist
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EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
Posted Feb 1, 2008 5:26 UTC (Fri) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]
Umm - it's fine for the EFF to call the patent bogus, but as journalists, LWN has a responsibility to be even-handed in its headlines and stories. The pejorative should have been quoted or described as being the EFF's language, rather than LWN's. [It's also easy to read the "illegitimate" and "bogus" in the text as being LWN's words, because the two-level quotation is visually confusing.]
EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
Posted Feb 1, 2008 16:01 UTC (Fri) by chris144 (subscriber, #30028) [Link]
Well, I think that the choice of words was right! Even from an objective point of view. Lets call bogus what is bogus!
EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
Posted Feb 1, 2008 21:03 UTC (Fri) by ccchips (guest, #3222) [Link]
We have a terribly broken patent system, and it wouldn't be a stretch to believe a lot of it is because of corruption, incompetence, overwork, or any and all of the above. Until that's fixed at least to some degree, I can see no way that opponents of software patents are left with much other than knee-jerk reactions. It's as if I were invitied into an apartment that was a complete pig-sty and someone pointed out to me that there was a McDonald's cup left on top of the TV set. In fact, now that I think about it, "objective" or "accurate" or "balanced" opinions about patents at this time in our history would probably be interpreted, by their supporters, as evidence the system might *not* be broken. Much as Microsoft bigots got all happy and "ya see-ya see!" whenever I used to say I thought Microsoft Access was pretty near the greatest program I ever used, overall.
EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
Posted Feb 2, 2008 0:32 UTC (Sat) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link]
[It's also easy to read the "illegitimate" and "bogus" in the text as being LWN's words, because the two-level quotation is visually confusing.]And tying back to another on-going discussion, the title is neither in quote marks nor does it say (eff.org) in parentheses after it.
Journalistic Objectivity is "Bogus"
Posted Feb 2, 2008 2:18 UTC (Sat) by AnswerGuy (subscriber, #1256) [Link]
Only the most idealistically naive readers expect journalists to be truly objective. No one with an ounce of practical sense expects journalistic impartiality. Sophisticated readers choose a variety of perspectives (different media sources among them) and view news from each with its own biases in mind. In particular LWN has had a strongly pro-FLOSS, anti-Software patent slant forever. Any idiot who reads it knows that. So it would be disingenuous of LWN's editorials staff to attempt to appear "balanced" on this issue. That's not to say that LWN should ignore any shred of mitigating or potentially redeeming quality to these patents; just to say that, if they agree with the EFF about the validity of these patents then I would not expect them to be mealy-mouthed about using words like "bogus." If you want to flip side of this sort of story --- look for Wall Street Journal's take on the story; or anything by the Kiplinger folks. They'll be about as "pro-business" as any sources I can think of. JimD
Journalistic Objectivity is "Bogus"
Posted Feb 3, 2008 20:23 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]
That doesn't mean that journalists shouldn't strive to be impartial. Across most of the world, journalists remember that. In the US, they seem to have forgotten...
Journalistic Objectivity is "Bogus"
Posted Feb 9, 2008 23:16 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]
If you want the flip side of this sort of story --- look for Wall Street Journal's take on the story; or anything by the Kiplinger folks. They'll be about as "pro-business" as any sources I can think of.
Are you saying bogus patents are pro-business? It's businesses that have to pay the royalties and legal defense expenses.
EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
Posted Feb 3, 2008 0:45 UTC (Sun) by MattPerry (guest, #46341) [Link]
> Umm - it's fine for the EFF to call the patent bogus, but as journalists, > LWN has a responsibility to be even-handed in its headlines and stories. LWN is even-handed in the headlines and stories that they create. Many articles, such as this one, are from the general news and are passed through unaltered, headline and all, because LWN is not the author. The summary is always a bit of text taken unaltered from the article text as well. This is the way LWN has always operated. I prefer this method rather than the Slashdot method where someone butchers the original title and summary with their own opinion.
EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent
Posted Feb 4, 2008 0:17 UTC (Mon) by sepreece (subscriber, #19270) [Link]
I hadn't noticed that this was a pass-through item. Some LWN announcements are apparently passed through, headline and all, others are cited with an LWN introduction and headline (Which here presumably would have been something like The EFF *announced* that...", where the "announced would have been a link). The only way I noticed to distinguish them is a "Comments:" at the bottom of ledes for cited items, versus "Full story:" on pass-throughs. I respect LWN's work, especially Jon's, a lot. On this particular aspect I think LWN would be improved if there were some clear indication in the story and headline when an item is a pass-through - like putting the source's name in the headline, e.g., "EFF: EFF takes aim at...", or even just putting quotation marks around the headline to indicate it's a quoted title. The current method seems to create an opportunity for people issuing news releases to game LWN into appearing to take an opinion in their headlines.