[MUD-Dev] patents and muds

[Bruce]

I hesitate to bring this up here, but with the constant issuing of patents
on basic things, it might be interesting to consider what might happen when
large companies start patenting mechanisms that they use in systems like
Ultima Online, EverQuest, Asheron's Call, Middle Earth Online, and so on.

Doing some searches on http://www.patents.ibm.com/ can turn up interesting
things, like: http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US05899810__

Can this list help to serve as an archive of prior art?  Has anyone run into
problems of this nature yet?

 - Bruce





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