[MUD-Dev] patents and muds

[Scott Boding]

Richard Bartle wrote:
> 
> Bruce Mitchener, Jr. <bruce at puremagic.com> writes:
> 
>  >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.
>         I guess this means you haven't heard about the Sitrick patent,
> US patent number 4,572,509, awarded 25th February 1986? Here's Sitrick's
> abstract:
> 

I noticed that there are 5 other patents that this one references and another
73 that reference this one. Looking over some of them, I almost don't see how
you could help but step on more than one of these patents when making an
online game of almost any sort. I find this kind of frightening.

How does this affect people who are publishing under GPL? Does this mean that
those of us working on our own online game projects need to become patent
researchers and laywers even if we intend to make no profit from them?



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