The latest target for the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Patent Busting Project comes courtesy of Patent 6,264,560, a patent for a "method and system for playing games on a network." The patent in question is held by Sheldon F. Goldberg and was granted on July 24, 2001, about two years after it was filed. Like many of the patents we cover on Ars, this one make some very broad claims.
Goldberg's patent claims to cover any and all online, multiplayer games that offer real-time updates of player rankings and use tournament-style play. Patent '560 also covers serving up targeted advertising using player demographics.
The EFF accuses Goldberg of extracting hefty licensing fees from online gaming companies anxious to avoid what could be costly litigation, a scenario that has become all too familiar.
According to the EFF, there's a significant amount of prior art on the '560 patent, the existence of which should lead the US Patent and Trademark Office to overturn it upon reexamination. In particular, Netrek, an online multiplayer game with origins in the mid 1980s, makes use of much of the same technology described in Goldberg's patent. Much of the code for Netrek is open source, and its development is archived online; the source code was first posted to Usenet in late 1989.
The EFF has also documented other instances of prior art with the assistance of students at the Cyberlaw Clinic at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School.
So far, the EFF has seen some success with its patent-busting project. Of the patents on its top ten list, one has been overturned while three others have had requests for reexamination granted by the USPTO. The overturned patent was held by Clear Channel and covered burning CDs of a performance right after a concert ends. That patent was revoked by the USPTO in March 2007.
Further reading
- The Electronic Frontier Foundation: "EFF Takes Aim at Bogus Online Gaming Patent"
- Learn more about the Netrek's history up to 1994—five years prior to Goldman's filing for Patent 6,264,560
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