[MUD-Dev2] [Design]Characters moving between worlds [was Personalvirtual worlds]

[Jeffrey Kesselman]

On 2/20/07, Michael Sellers <mike at onlinealchemy.com> wrote:
> Caliban Darklock wrote:
> > Michael Sellers wrote:
> >> Mike Rozak wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >> Also, anyone considering this area should note that Trip Hawkins (EA, 3DO,
> >> now Digital Chocolate) holds a pretty strong patent on the process of
> >> transferring data between worlds such that it takes on different forms in
> >> each world (e.g. your knight with a cool sword on a warhorse in a fantasy
> >> world becomes a pilot with a ray gun in a space ship in a SF world).  This
> >> patent doesn't resolve the security issues, but it does remove a
> >> 'normalization' path for those who would munge incoming data to fit their
> >> own world.
> >
> > WRT to this patent, does it date back before 1995? Because if not, I
> > have prior art.
>
>
> It was awarded in 1995 or '96.  I'm not sure when it was filed.  If you
> truly have prior art, I would *love* to hear about it.

Doesn't sound terribly defensible.

The pen and paper game TORG published in 1990 had a system for
characters changing as they moved between worlds.

*shrug*