Microsoft Patents Saving The Name Of A Game

[theodp]

--> From http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040406/1349225.shtml

Microsoft Patents Saving The Name Of A Game
Contributed by Mike on Tuesday, April 6th, 2004 @ 01:49PM
from the yeah,-that's-non-obvious dept.

theodp writes "As if there weren't enough dodgy patents, here's an
excerpt from one granted to Microsoft Tuesday for a 'Method and
apparatus for displaying information regarding stored data in a gaming
system': 'When saving a game, the saved game data may include a
descriptive name of the saved game, a graphic representation of the
state of the game when the game was saved, a description of the game
state when the game was saved, and a date and time that the game was
saved.'" I'm trying to figure out if there's more to this patent, but
the more I read, the worse it seems. How is this possibly
"non-obvious"?

--> Link to Patent

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-P...mber=6,716,102

--> Link to Patent File History (Shows Two Earlier Rejections)

http://pair.uspto.gov/cgi-bin/final/...mber=6,716,102

[Linønut]

Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:

"Bruce Hayden" <no************ @ieee.org> wrote:

Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?

Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.

You mean like MikeRoweSoft.co m?

--
Trust your data to a Linux server or desktop!

[mcubed (Michael M.)]

Linønut wrote:

Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:

"Bruce Hayden" <no************ @ieee.org> wrote:

Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?

Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.

You mean like MikeRoweSoft.co m?

That was a trademark issue. Completely different from patent infringement.

Trademarks must be vigorously enforced in order to remain viable. Why
do you think the Slackware developer asked the Slax developer to change
the original name of the latter distro? Because he's a big evil
monopolist? You can't say, "Oh, I'll make an exception in your case
'cause I like you." If you do, you set a precedent. Then when someone
you don't like comes along with a variation you don't like, it becomes
more difficult to defend the exclusivity of your mark.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael M. ~~ hf********@msbx .net ~~ New York City, NY USA |
| "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely |
| under conditions of absolute reality;..." --S. Jackson |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+

[mcubed (Michael M.)]

Linønut wrote:

Error BR-549: MS DRM 1.0 rejects the following post from Roger Schlafly:

"Bruce Hayden" <no************ @ieee.org> wrote:

Doesn't work that way, at least in my experience in the real world.
A $250 infringement investigation and letter is not going to be
sufficient to overcome being frivilous. Also, why should they
bother? Where is the monetary return to MSFT?

Usually there is no monetary return to Msft, and Msft doesn't
bother. My point was only that Msft's cost for sending a letter
can be as low as $250.

It does occasionally happen that Msft has a business reason for
going after a small company. Not often, but occasionally.

You mean like MikeRoweSoft.co m?

That was a trademark issue. Completely different from patent infringement.

Trademarks must be vigorously enforced in order to remain viable. Why
do you think the Slackware developer asked the Slax developer to change
the original name of the latter distro? Because he's a big evil
monopolist? You can't say, "Oh, I'll make an exception in your case
'cause I like you." If you do, you set a precedent. Then when someone
you don't like comes along with a variation you don't like, it becomes
more difficult to defend the exclusivity of your mark.
--
+------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael M. ~~ hf********@msbx .net ~~ New York City, NY USA |
| "No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely |
| under conditions of absolute reality;..." --S. Jackson |
+------------------------------------------------------------------+

[nobody]

Rahul Dhesi wrote:
[...]

Claim 1 would thus appear to cover almost every game-capable computer
system that has two hard disks; presumably including high-end TRS-80 and
Apple-II models from the 1970s.

i haven't read the entire thing yet, but to the extent you're accurate,
this one won't survive even one simple challenge. the difficulty lies
in arcane language and claim dependency -- one claim depends on a
preceding claim, depends on next previous one, and so on. you must do a
lot of digging to find the basis of the patent, and it could be quite
narrow.

[nobody]

Rahul Dhesi wrote:
[...]

Claim 1 would thus appear to cover almost every game-capable computer
system that has two hard disks; presumably including high-end TRS-80 and
Apple-II models from the 1970s.

i haven't read the entire thing yet, but to the extent you're accurate,
this one won't survive even one simple challenge. the difficulty lies
in arcane language and claim dependency -- one claim depends on a
preceding claim, depends on next previous one, and so on. you must do a
lot of digging to find the basis of the patent, and it could be quite
narrow.

[LEE Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Barry" == Barry Margolin <ba****@alum.mi t.edu> writes:

How to modify the above scheme to separate the various games is
*trivial* to anyone trained in the field. So, that patent claim fails
the novelty requirement.

Barry> Putting a game's files in its own subdirectory is certainly
Barry> trivial. *Preventing* other applications (including other
Barry> games) from accessing them takes a bit of work.

That's trivial on Unix, and most multi-user operation systems.

It may take a lot of work to do it on a system designed for only one
user and with no concurrent sessions (i.e. no remote login when you're
on the console).
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informat ik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

[LEE Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Barry" == Barry Margolin <ba****@alum.mi t.edu> writes:

How to modify the above scheme to separate the various games is
*trivial* to anyone trained in the field. So, that patent claim fails
the novelty requirement.

Barry> Putting a game's files in its own subdirectory is certainly
Barry> trivial. *Preventing* other applications (including other
Barry> games) from accessing them takes a bit of work.

That's trivial on Unix, and most multi-user operation systems.

It may take a lot of work to do it on a system designed for only one
user and with no concurrent sessions (i.e. no remote login when you're
on the console).
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informat ik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

[LEE Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Richardson <wa*****@eskimo .com> writes:

Jim> No, just give the games their own uid, and chmod the files 700, no-one
Jim> without that uid can read the game (except root)

Even root is disallowed to do that... WHEN it's NFS-mounted from
another machine. :)

(Of course, root can 'su' and then do whatever he wants.)
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informat ik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

[LEE Sau Dan]

>>>>> "Jim" == Jim Richardson <wa*****@eskimo .com> writes:

Jim> No, just give the games their own uid, and chmod the files 700, no-one
Jim> without that uid can read the game (except root)

Even root is disallowed to do that... WHEN it's NFS-mounted from
another machine. :)

(Of course, root can 'su' and then do whatever he wants.)
--
Lee Sau Dan +Z05biGVm-(Big5) ~{@nJX6X~}(HZ)

E-mail: da****@informat ik.uni-freiburg.de
Home page: http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~danlee

[Jan Roland Eriksson]

On Fri, 09 Apr 2004 00:09:29 GMT, Bruce Hayden <no************ @ieee.org>
wrote:

[hoping that this is still of some historical interest for a few in the
ciwah NG, I know its OT so for any further posts in the thread I will
remove ciwah]

Jan Roland Eriksson wrote:

[1] Believe it or not, even Gary Kildall of CP/M fame, was not unaware
of Bell Lab's developments in the UNIX area and even though most of
Gary's efforts on CP/M had its roots in Digital Equipment software of
the time, he did implement ways to "tweak" CP/M to behave a bit like
UNIX for a single user environment...

I was frankly surprised when I found CP/M and DOS looking
a bit like UNIX, first time I used them. Did Gary make a proposal before the IBM/MSFT fiasco?
Not that I know of. The story has it that when IBM called on his
doorstep to ask for a OS, targeting their new PC design, Gary was not
physically there to open the door. He was out flying (he loved to fly
his planes him self) to a business meeting in some other part of the US.
...Gary's unpublished autobiography.. .
...paints an unsurprisingly negative picture of both IBM and MSFT,
with a lot of details that did not make it into the TV special...

I just think he was not visionary enough to see the business potential
that was coming his way. He already "ruled" the 8-bit micro computing
field with something like half a million registered CP/M installations.
At that time such a "momentum" got looked on as "non-destructible" so
IBM could wait a day or two to get what they needed.

OTOH, the PC incentive, inside IBM, was internally looked on as
something "that the cat dragged in"; no real value computing could be
done without mainframes, as every decent IBM'er already knew as a fact
and truth of life :-)

So; the IBM-PC guys that visited Gary's office did not have time at hand
to "wait a day or two", they had a stranglehold budget and a fixed
timeline to meet.

It is exactly at this point where Bill Gates shows his only talent, as
in how to find a product - tweak it into "my" product - and sell it to
the one in need of it.

The full size of Microsoft today is built on the same procedure in all
parts of its products; i.e. no MS product today started out as a
"invented here" thingy, but instead it is "purchase some one else's work
and make sure to move him out of the system while you do it".

I'm totally convinced that the guy(s) behind QDOS[1] are still biting
their nails for selling away the 16-bit CP/M hack they had made, at such
a low price to Bill G, just to see him make his fortune from it in the
times to come.

The name "QDOS" vanished of course and got replaced with "MS-DOS" but
from the IBM start of things it was essentially "QDOS" that IBM
purchased.

[1] QDOS = "Quick'n Dirty Operating System" One of the first free
standing ports of CP/M from an 8-bit environment over to a 16-bit
version.

--
Rex