Patent Issue Delays Doom 3 Source Code Release 283
An anonymous reader writes "id Software is still planning to release the Doom 3 source this year, but it's been delayed by a patent issue that's causing John Carmack to personally rewrite some of the code. The patent issue in Doom 3 concerns the Carmack's Reverse algorithm and has led Carmack to rewrite it in the open-source Doom 3."
Human civilization fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually Carmack might find himself in hot water over this if the patent holders (Creative Labs) get litigious, which they undoubtedly will because in cases like these the patents are there so that they can be used to extort funds, much like trolls guarding a bridge, forcing payment in order for permission to pass.
I wonder if Id had previously settled with Creative about this patent issue, or not -- because Doom 3 was the most successful product launch for the company to date at over 3.5mil copies sold. That could be a big payday for Creative Labs if Id didn't contract this properly.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
Creative did this to EVERY development studio if they used stencil shadows on previous generation titles. They certainly did for the developer I worked for. Why else do you think EAX survived longer then a heartbeat?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
At least EAX worked, unlike some of the earlier sound driver APIs in Linux land.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
And this kind of fucking bullshit is why mathematical algorithms should not fucking be patentable. EVER.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
Id at the time agreed to use some Creative sound technology in Doom 3 that they wouldn't have otherwise used in exchange for Creative not patent trolling Id over Carmack's Reverse being used in Doom 3.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Interesting)
In addition if anyone remembers, there were plenty of issues between id, Creative and (wait for it) Gravis. Yes, for anyone old enough to remember those days, the UltraSound card by Gravis was the first wave table sound card and VASTLY superior to anything (non)Creative Labs ever put out.
id's support of the UltraSound card was a bone of contention for Creative and I can easily see that Creative would have a hair across their collective ass(ets) including something they (creative) might want to litigate for.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember very well - I followed the GUS to market on Usenet and preordered one before they came out. Despite a rough initial release, especially with driver issues and a lack of much native support (due to SB/ADLIB support in software only), it was still an incredible soundcard for it's time and I remember it very fondly.
Interestingly (and to bring this post back on topic), id Software were one of the first commercial game companies to provide support for the Gravis Ultrasound and as the parent points out it caused a fair amount of friction at the time. Bear in mind that this was back in the days of id's Doom - a smash hit that was single-handedly responsible for selling a crapton of ethernet cables, modems and routers due to the, novel and the time, 4 player networking support build in to the game. Native support of the Ultrasound (which sounded FAR FAR FAR better than the SoundBlaster) had the potential to sell a lot of sound hardware too, something Creative clearly felt threatened by.
Re: (Score:3)
" ship alarmingly priced cards in the face of shit that has the decency to be priced as such, from outfits like realtek, and genuinely decent hardware from companies that actually know something about audio..."
Their "alarmingly high priced" cards are your subjective perception and they are still miles better then most onboard solutions in terms of features and sound quality, volume and software features. I have yet to find a soundcard that comes with simple, easy to use and clean audio tools that you get w
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
I had an A3D sound card back in the late 90s, that cost $20 at the time and would still kick the crap out of a modern day $80 Creative card.
Even back then, it had better 3D sound than I've heard in the past decade from any game, and used almost no CPU time, even back on my Celeron 450a.
What happened to them you ask? Creative kept at them with a frivolous lawsuit that eventually bankrupt Aureal with lawyer fees. Aureal was ran almost entirely by engineers, which meant very cheap high quality and innovative products/research, but they couldn't survive in the USA lawsuit world.
I have loathed Creative ever since. They are on the same level as RIAA/MPAA for me.
Re: (Score:2)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Insightful)
world renowned for having not done a damn thing worth mentioning since the SoundBlaster
Chronology of most tech companies:
-Genius Engineer develops tech
-Salesman buddy helps start company
-Product becomes sucessfull
-Salesman brings in more of his salesman/lawyer buddies to grow company
-Group of salesmen/lawyers push genius engineer to some obscure corner of the company
-Innovation slows to crawl or stops entirely
-Company floats for the next decade or two off litigation and anti-competitive licensing while salesmen/lawyers rake in $$
-Another genius engineer somewhere else develops better tech
-Company devoid of any innovation fades into obscurity
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Insightful)
-Another genius engineer somewhere else develops better tech
-Company devoid of any innovation fades into obscurity
Correction: Company devoid of any innovation sues new company out of existence, this is the reality of the current market thanks to the patent mess we have.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Informative)
It gets worse when you consider that (if I recall correctly), the patent was held by Creative Labs, and they waited until a month or two before the game was to be released to inform id of the patent. They essentially blackmailed id into putting EAX-specific features to avoid a lawsuit and delay the game's release.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, trademark owners are required to protect their IP rights or risk losing them. The one possible exception in the patent world is submarine patents, but it doesn't sound like that sort of situation was present here.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you know anything about anything? What exactly do you think EAX is? What exactly do you think Carmack's Reverse is? Lurk moar.
CAPTCHA: cruddy
Re: (Score:3)
Thank you for your incisive and informative argument. Next time, if you feel he has it wrong, please actually contribute something other than "you're an idiot", so that we can all benefit from your knowledge. The Wikipedia article notes that it was discovered in 1999 by some Creative engineers (why were they stenciling shadow volumes? I have no idea), presented at a conference, and then subsequently patented. It also notes that Carmack independently invented it in 2000.
I can certainly see how Carmark mig
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
And this helps innovation somehow?
Oh no, not at all. This helps the rich get richer. What, you thought government was looking out for you?
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:4, Insightful)
you do?
Oh good!
Fight a patent troll in court, win, and the judge will order the troll to pay all legal expenses. And like that, poof. He's gone! (And your company is lumbered with all the legal costs). Sadly it's normally just cheaper to comply, no matter how much evidence of prior art you have.
A few years ago we used to have conferences where people would actually detail how the technical aspects of their games worked. These days a patent troll would be at the back of the conference, and would have submitted a patent application before the speaker had even finished presenting. It's no wonder that companies are so unwilling to let their employees write papers these days
John Carmack on Software Patents (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
I fully agree with Carmack, and I don't see why I would feel differently if I was designing toasters, hammers or microscope objectives.
Re: (Score:3)
Because something that is inependently invented within a year of the filing date and before the patent is granted doesn't deserve patent protection.
Conceptually, it is clearly something obvious enough to those skilled in the field and thus not patent worthy. Practically, society has the invention there's no need to grant a temporary monopoly on it to someone in exchange for them publishing it.
Re: (Score:2)
Because something that is inependently invented within a year of the filing date and before the patent is granted doesn't deserve patent protection.
I don't see anything in the patent act that says that patents are only granted to inventions that are "deserving". Do you have a citation?
Conceptually, it is clearly something obvious enough to those skilled in the field and thus not patent worthy.
[Citation needed]. How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea? The mere fact that it's possible that two people can both eventually, through hard work, come up with the same solution doesn't mean the solution is obvious - it means we have two smart people.
Additionally, your interpretation is directly coun
Re: (Score:3)
Non-obviousness, you know one of the patent criteria.
Re:Human civilization fail (Score:4, Insightful)
Non-obviousness, you know one of the patent criteria.
Surely Carmack discovering it independently doesn't make it obvious.
Re: (Score:3)
Saying that Carmack is "skilled" at gaming is like saying Einstein was "skilled" in physics.
Re: (Score:2)
[Citation needed]. How do you know that the second inventor didn't spend months and months working hard to come up with the idea? The mere fact that it's possible that two people can both eventually, through hard work, come up with the same solution doesn't mean the solution is obvious - it means we have two smart people.
The actions of Creative reveal whether it was obvious in the literal sense, which should match the legal sense (but does not for some strange reason).
Creative had a patent on an algorithm for shadows. Doom 3 had shadows. Evidently, the algorithm was so obvious that Creative "knew" id Software had infringed without even looking at what the Doom 3 code is actually doing. It's as if they knew there was no other way. Not sure about today's graphics research, but how would they be so certain they knew that at th
Re: (Score:2)
Because something that is inependently invented within a year of the filing date and before the patent is granted doesn't deserve patent protection.
Conceptually, it is clearly something obvious enough to those skilled in the field and thus not patent worthy. Practically, society has the invention there's no need to grant a temporary monopoly on it to someone in exchange for them publishing it.
If you had that exception there would be a can of worms. How many people would claim to have invented something even if they had seen "patent pending" the example?
About the software patent-- IBTT (Score:4, Interesting)
This has all been above-board WRT Creative. It merely raises the question again as to whether patents should last over 10 years, or whether patents should be issued for software in the first place.
Re:About the software patent-- IBTT (Score:5, Informative)
It escaped litigation because id made a deal with creative to promote creative hardware within Doom 3 in exchange for not getting sued.
Presumably that deal didn't include releasing the source at some point.
Re: (Score:2)
Since the source _is_ the invention, and the pantent requires full disclosure of the invention such that one skilled in the art could recreate the invention (they just can't sell anything sans licensing for ~17 years), then _filing the patent_ should require disclosure of the source.
Re:About the software patent-- IBTT (Score:5, Insightful)
or whether patents should be issued for software in the first place.
I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work? If it really is just an incremental update, nothing novel but taking existing ideas and tying them together, it seems the opposite of innovative; it seems to me this algorithm was inevitable. If not these people, somebody would have very shortly thereafter discovered it. So why do we make such a big deal about who got there first? How does forcing everybody to licence a technology from that person that they could feasibly develop on their own, Chinese clean-room style, HELP innovation?
/. book, but seriously, they're doing some real harm to the industry. Its not just MS, but they're a big nasty troll right now, and they have enough money they shouldn't need to resort to tactics like this.)
It doesn't. Software patents do not help. They hurt. Companies like Microsoft buy tons of patents from college kids for pennies and then sit on them with no intention of actually using the patent described, just so they can litigate or strong-arm other companies into paying fees. Free money! This actually HELPS monopolies (I know ragging on MS is the oldest joke in the
I mean, think about it. Carmack developed this algorithm. Now he's trying to open source it and share it with the world for free. AND A PATENT IS PREVENTING THIS. Show me how patents "help protect innovation and creativity." This is so backwards it hurts.
Re: (Score:2)
Carmack developed this algorithm
No, no he did not. William Bilodeau and Michael Songy developed this algorithm 2 years before Carmack recreated it. The fact that this method was being presented at Creative's developer conferences a year before Carmack invented it also doesn't help the credibility of his independent discover claim. Since there's no hard evidence, it would become a Carmack's word versus Creative's if anyone takes action, and with the timeline of invention/presentation of the technique, I would be inclined to side with Cr
Re: (Score:2)
Certainly he should cover his ass here, they did it first, they got the patent successfully, and yeah, his own lawyers are saying rewrite it, so he's rewriting it. As the law currently is, he wouldn't have a leg to stand on.
I'm just saying that, as a software developer, this scares the shit out of me.
Re:About the software patent-- IBTT (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, yes he did! He did not develop it *first*. I don't even like the word "recreated" unless Carmack knew of their work. If he didn't, they both developed it, by which I mean went through the intellectual exercise of coming up with the idea and implementing it in code.
I'm not opposed to ALL software patents, but vehemently opposed to patents on things that aren't true innovations. Carmack's complaint that he shouldn't be able to sit down, solve a problem in an obvious way, and be told his code is infringing because someone else did the same obvious thing earlier is entirely valid.
The problem I see is that the underlying technology changes, which makes solutions possible or practical that no one would have done before simply because they didn't work. If Intel/AMD/nvidia/whatever comes out with a billion core chip tomorrow and I solve some problem today in a trivial way that only works on billion core chips, who innovated? It wasn't me, I was just the one who used today's new hammer to whack yesterday's old nail.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, consider if the patent is the "prize" and compare it to the X-prize foundation. You can't assume that just because multiple competitors came up with nearly the same solution but one nabbed the prize slightly before the others that this was just about to happen anyway. Maybe not Carmack himself, but I'm pretty sure someone over there values their IP portfolio and that's part of the reason they get paid. That's what patents do, create a scramble to invent as fast as possible and run to the patent office
Re:About the software patent-- IBTT (Score:5, Insightful)
That's what patents do, create a scramble to invent as fast as possible and run to the patent office. The downside is of course that the innovation is locked up in a patent the next 20 years. You can argue that this is wrong but that's roughly the way it's worked since Edison and Bell, there's nothing special related to software here.
The "scramble" you speak of isn't worth the cost of locking out algorithms for 20 years. People are already "scrambling" on their own, making good software and selling it is plenty incentive already. Having a copyright on the software is good enough. You can get out first, you can get market recognition, you don't need to have a monopoly on the underlying algorithm. Its massive overkill that is going to hamstring development and turn companies like Microsoft into patent trolls that don't produce anything of their own. They now make more money from Android fees and litigation than they do from Windows Phone.
There is something special related to software. Algorithms can be converted to lambda calculus; they are mathematical formula. Mathematical formula are exempt from patentability for a reason; they are not your own creative solution, but rather exist inherent to the universe, they are part of the space we all exist in, and you are merely describing a method, not creating a work of art or a novel invention.
Re: (Score:2)
I mean, think about it. Carmack developed this algorithm. Now he's trying to open source it and share it with the world for free. AND A PATENT IS PREVENTING THIS. Show me how patents "help protect innovation and creativity." This is so backwards it hurts.
Under the conditions of obtaining a patent, Creative has already released all the details necessary to reproduce the process/algorithm/whatever. So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong. It's already on public record.
Patents "help protect innovation and creativity", because one has to release the details about how to do whatever it is that they're patenting. Once the patent ends, anyone can pull up the patent information and reproduce it. The proces
Re: (Score:2)
Under the conditions of obtaining a patent, Creative has already released all the details necessary to reproduce the process/algorithm/whatever. So the whole notion of "this is preventing the information from getting out to the public" is wrong. It's already on public record.
Yes, of course. I can go read it, and find out how to reproduce it, but then I can't actually USE it unless Creative says I can. However, if I was able to come up with it on my own, without their help, I still wouldn't be able to use it without their permission.
Yes, I understand the basic theory on how patents work. When it comes to software algorithms I reject that answer and I feel it does more harm than good.
"Public record" Doesn't matter. Oh look, we can go read the algorithm! How fun! Uh, unless y
Re: (Score:2)
I really gotta say, in cases like this it seems so insanely obvious that this should NOT be patent-able. Someone else came up with the EXACT same technique very shortly thereafter or simultaneously, without reading your patent or any of your work?
1. So? Maybe you were working for months and months to come up with the technique, and maybe they were also working for months and months to come up with the technique. Independent invention doesn't say anything about whether the idea is obvious - it merely means that two people were working on it simultaneously.
Dozens of pharma companies are working on a cure for cancer right now, and have been for decades. If two of them happen to finish their research and come up with a successful idea at roughly the sa
Re: (Score:2)
1. So? Maybe you were working for months and months to come up with the technique, and maybe they were also working for months and months to come up with the technique. Independent invention doesn't say anything about whether the idea is obvious - it merely means that two people were working on it simultaneously.
2. Both the patent act prior to the AIA and the newly reformed statutes include procedures for what to do when two inventors independently invent and apply for the same patent... and the answer is not "neither gets it". Congress certainly doesn't think that it's obvious.
Fair enough, maybe obvious is the wrong word. But still, if two people both get done at the same time, giving the one who got done atomically by a day or two on years of development a patent and monopoly on the item while the other party has to pay the first party is just wrong. Maybe you say somehow they share a patent, but then what about if somebody else is done a week later as well? How long does the window stay open? Either way it doesn't help things. I understand that if I don't want to have to re-do
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, that bit is why whatever they come up with to cure cancer is NOT obvious and IS worthy of patent protection. As an example of something that wouldn't be worthy of patent protection, imagine SARS-II emerges next year. No one has ever tried to cure or prevent transmission of this new disease. You take the revolutionary step of wearing a surgical mask, quarantining infected people, using negative press
Re: (Score:2)
An innovation is all about taking existing ideas and putting them togeth
back it up a little.. (Score:2)
"Companies like Microsoft buy tons of patents from college kids for pennies"
Please consider, no one forces them to sell?
imagine if with offer to sell in hand- they instead donate the patent to a 501c qualified free software organization and derived a tax benefit
the offer to buy should stand as evidence of value.
Re: (Score:3)
My problem isn't that he may or may not have stolen it. My problem is it really doesn't matter. Looking over this algorithm, I feel
Re: (Score:2)
William Bilodeau and Michael Songy discovered this technique in October 1998, and presented the technique at Creativity, a Creative Labs developer's conference, in 1999.[2] Sim Dietrich presented this technique at a Creative Labs developer's forum in 1999.
So, it was presented at a conference a year before Carmack invented it. That said, it looks like a fairly straightforward and relatively obvious modification of an existing algorithm. If the patent office required patents to be reviewed by domain experts, it would have been rejected.
Re: (Score:2)
That said, it looks like a fairly straightforward and relatively obvious modification of an existing algorithm. If the patent office required patents to be reviewed by domain experts, it would have been rejected.
Yeah, thats my thought exactly. :)
Re: (Score:2)
Someone else pointed out the presentation at a conference for me. So I'll just respond to the other portion.
I don't believe there should be patents on anything at all. If we are going to have them at all, this seems like a perfectly valid one. It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.
Re: (Score:3)
Even if you think this particular instance of independent invention is f
Re: (Score:2)
It obviously wasn't 'obvious' or someone should have come up with the optimization years earlier.
When, before computers existed? Obviously some conditions are necessary before anybody cares about this, you need real-time rendering to be a big deal that is commonly used, you need shadow volumes to matter and be feasible to calculate in real-time, so that means you need advanced 3D gaming to be a big deal, and you need video card hardware that can handle the rendering (so this really would have appealed to nobody pre late 90s, aka, exactly when it was developed. Huh.)
The idea that Archimedes would hav
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Sure, if you want to throw out patents entirely, that's fine with me. If you believe they should exist, only then do I argue that this is a perfectly legitimate use of them.
Re: (Score:2)
Because the businesses who fund the courts wanted it that way.
Props to Mr. Carmack (Score:5, Interesting)
I realize there may be a financial incentive for rewriting what is no doubt a fair chunk of one of the key "selling points" of the DOOM 3 engine, however I'm glad to see that this is being done so the source can be released *publically*. Even if not much comes from it, I personally enjoy going over the code released from id Software...it's like going and in time and watching Da Vinci with a hammer and chisel.
(Yes, yes "Carmack's no Da Vinci", but he is as close to one as most Programmer's can get.)
Re: (Score:2)
Yah but, let's see Da Vinci's impaled head take more than one or two blasts of rocket splash damage without being reduced to gibs. We KNOW where Carmack's cranium stacks up in that test.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh wait...wrong dev.... hmmm guess we need to devise a new test.
Re: (Score:3)
Just FYI, none of those games you mentioned use or are based on Quake 3's source code. Warsow is based on QFusion, a modified Quake 2 engine and Cube and Sauerbraten used their own engines developed from scratch.
Re: (Score:2)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_3#Uses_of_the_engine [wikipedia.org] Actual examples of the open sourced quake 3 code:
ioquake, urban terror, temulous
Carmack can't use "Carmack's Reverse" (Score:5, Funny)
It's like we're trolling ourselves.
Saw this coming.. (Score:5, Interesting)
I sent John Carmack an email about this back in April 2009:
Hi John,
I believe you've said publicly that you are planning a GPL release of the Doom 3 source code, but I remember around the time the game was launched you had Creative holding a patent on the shadows algorithm, and you assuaged them by including support for EAX. Is that still causing problems?
-Dave
When we release the code (no date set), anyone that uses it would potentially be infringing. There are workarounds at a modest performance cost.
John Carmack
It sounds like id's lawyers are asking him to implement one of the workarounds he mentioned before he makes the public release.
Re:Saw this coming.. Performance won't be noticed (Score:3)
And at the same time, "modest performance cost" is probably negligable at this point. Doom 3 was released in 2005 according to wiki, and via Steam in 2007. While the margin of improvement has slowed, systems will be quite a bit beefier by the time it is released. And when open source takes hold of it and makes derivative games (I mean that in a good way) the hardware will be able to compensate.
Remember, this patent is for a speed hack, which is generally useful for about 5 years max in computer land. Th
Re: (Score:2)
And at the same time, "modest performance cost" is probably negligable at this point.
Agreed. The wikipedia article linked from this story illustrates that the industry hasn't stood still and there have been developments by nVidia and others for alternative methods. If we're lucky the new Doom 3 source will have a better algorithm than the retail version.
Act quick! (Score:2)
Somebody reverse Carmack's Reverse and put it on a tshirt!
Re: (Score:2)
John Carmack is a class act (Score:5, Insightful)
So Carmack is doing something for the good of society, and a commercial company chooses to add a roadblock. But rather than give up, he spends his own time to rewrite the algorithm in a way that avoids the patent. That is a phenomenal level of dedication to the open-source community. He doesn't have to release the code. He doesn't have to rewrite that section.
Thank you John.
Re: (Score:2)
Absolutely true. I propose we make this the official "Thank you" thread. Thank you John! You rock!
Re: (Score:2)
Almost.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Not to mention that I thought when Bethesda/Zenimax bought out iD, they said iD would never again release an engine as open source.
I suspect that Carmack has had to fight considerably to make this happen.
Re: (Score:3)
No, they didn't, they simply said that they would stop licensing id engines for games that are not published by Zenimax. If third party developers want to use an id engine, they need to publish through Zenimax.
Re: (Score:3)
That can't be true because Quake 3 wasn't published by Zenimax and I know Urban Terror HD is now an officially licensee of the Quake 3 engine.
I think you've flipped it around. Zenimax will license the old engines, but won't license the current engine as they consider it a competitive advantage.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/29886/id_Tech_5_Rage_Engine_No_Longer_Up_For_External_Licensing.php [gamasutra.com]
However, official licenses have nothing to do with open sourcing the old engines. And I saw multiple news stories t
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, this is crappy... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Shadowmaps can still look worse than stencil shadows in many situations. Especially if the stencil shadows are not of sufficiently high resolution to produce smooth edges.
On the other hand, stencil shadows can do soft shadowing a heck of a lot easier.
a simple solution (Score:2)
Just remove it. While it was a clever optimization for its time, on current hardware it is unnecessary.
This is what JC's tweet suggests he is doing, not re-writing it.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion, since writing new code isn't the same as just removing code.
Removing code often involves creating new code. Such as the code which makes it possible for the game to operate without a component it previously made use of.
I wouldn't call that a "replacement algorithm" any more than removing a window and closing the resulting hole in the wall is a "replacement window" even though there is new material (the stuff I used to close the hole in the wall)
That said, OP i
this is an amazing thing for Id/Carmack to do (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was your age (Score:5, Funny)
When I was your age, we http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1ZtBCpo0eU [youtube.com]
Enjoy :)
!!!
THIS (Score:2)
Thank you, Mr. Carmack... (Score:2)
...You deserve every twin-turbo F50 you can get your hands on. Mad propz.
Will we get the original source, too? (Score:4, Insightful)
It sounds like Carmack is implementing a workaround to the Creative patent. That's very decent of him, but there's still nothing preventing release of the original (claimed infringing) source code. At worst, anyone who *used* the source would be infringing but publishing it would not be a problem (the patent is disclosed by definition, after all).
Seeing the original implementation side-by-side with the new workaround would be incredibly interesting, I think.
Re:Can a developer explain this? (Score:4, Informative)
For patents, the filing date is what counts in this scenario. The one to file first "wins". There's more to it, IIRC, as you can claim priority on public disclosures and foreign patents. So if you publish something in a scientific journal, say, you have a year to file a patent for it, and your invention is protected retroactively since the publication date in the journal. Someone who knows U.S. patent law better feel free to chime in with corrections, I'm not 100% sure about it. I'll ask a patent lawyer at work to see if he has anything to add to that.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
I think it's actually the reverse, at least currently. I believe the US is currently a first to invent system. However, there is legislation that is either going to be passed or may have just been passed recently that changes it to first to file as you described.
I'm not sure how that would apply retroactively, though, nor am I sure what date such a change would take effect if it has already been passed.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it's actually the reverse, at least currently. I believe the US is currently a first to invent system. However, there is legislation that is either going to be passed or may have just been passed recently that changes it to first to file as you described.
I'm not sure how that would apply retroactively, though, nor am I sure what date such a change would take effect if it has already been passed.
In this case, it doesn't matter, because if Carmack didn't figure it out until 2000, and Creative Labs filed a patent on it in 1999, Carmack definitely wasn't first to invent.
Re:Can a developer explain this? (Score:4, Insightful)
The key is the scope of the claims in the patent, which is what defines what the patent covers and doesn't cover. Claims are not code, so they can cover multiple specific implementations of an invention.
As for Carmack's work as prior art, it would only count if it were published (or on public use or sale in the US) more than a year before the filing date of the patent (or less than a year if the patentee can't show that they had invented it before said publication/use). In any event, prior art on or after the filing date of a patent isn't actually "prior".
Re: (Score:3)
The problem is that due to the way patent law works in America, someone would have to be sued for infringement, then fight it in court, and win. You (generally) can't preemptively sue for an ironclad declaration of non-infringement. AFAIK, there IS a process for seeking a judgment that your use is non-infringing, but the barrier and risk is VERY high; if you lose, it's considered authoritative proof of intentional infringement if you do it anyway (and thus subject to treble damages), and if you win, you can
Re: (Score:2)
Problem is - it's not his patent, but Creative's. Turns out that he independently reached the same algorithm as they did, and iD "licensed" it when they used EAX.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Its worse then that ...
RSA patent filed on December 14, 1977, approved as #4,405,829 titled "Cryptographic Communications System and Method" to MIT, Rivest, Shamir, and Adelman. However, since it was published before the patent application, it could not be patented under European and Japanese law.
Seriously, how the fuck do you patent a NUMBER ???
http://www.langston.com/Fun_People/1995/1995AYU.html [langston.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Well, ID is allowed to release it with the code in there. They just don't want people using their code to get in trouble.
Re: (Score:2)
Really?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_4 [wikipedia.org]
It came out six years ago. Done by Raven. Not a great game, but not a bad one either. Decent, is the word I'd use. Multiplayer was fun, an update of Quake 3. It can be purchased from a variety of digital distribution networks, such as Steam or Impulse ($20 each), or from online stores like Amazon ($8 for mac version, $38 for PC)