EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent

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open-source software, and its code development has been
archived online.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-

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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.]

Well, I think that the choice of words was right! Even from an objective point of view. Lets
call bogus what is bogus!

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.

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

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...

> 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.

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.