FULL Article at http://www.igda.org/columns/lastwords/l ... _Mar05.phpMagnavox was not successful with its early Odyssey system; but a patent it controlled covering collisions of a pixel with an object on a raster screen display resulted in huge settlements. A big judgment against Activision led to Activision's bankruptcy and reorganization when the patent was litigated by Philips Corporation, parent of Magnavox.
Similarly, the original Atari, as a video game pioneer and patent owner, engaged in patent fights with its competitors when it could no longer compete in the hardware and games arenas.
American Video Graphics, L.P. (“AVG”) is the owner of United States Patent No. 4,734,690, filed April 6, 1987 and granted March 29, 1988, titled “Method and Apparatus for Spherical Panning.”
The patent describes a method of displaying 3-D panning and a zoom feature on a graphics display terminal.
In 2004, McCool Smith, a Texas law firm, filed suit in the United States District Court in Tyler, Texas against 12 publisher defendants, claiming that multiple games released by these twelve infringe upon what has become known as the ‘690 patent.
Defendants are Electronic Arts, Take-Two, Ubisoft, Activision, Atari, THQ, Vivendi Universal, Sega of America, Square Enix, Tecmo, LucasArts, and Namco Hometek. Several of these defendants have joined together to mount a common (and very costly) defense.
Apparently, somebody is suing the whole world (and actually winning) over a method of displaying 3-D panning and a zoom feature on a graphics display terminal.
Relevancy? Pretty much the same method of 3-d panning and zooming we all use when programming.
. *to those who read the full article* So what, the developers are now going to refuse to have sex with the publishers to end this?:P 