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I passed this on to a friend of mine who has been doing virtual currency in online games since the mid 1990s (MUDs) and has been called as an expert witness in
by Lasher 9y ago
I passed this on to a friend of mine who has been doing virtual currency in online games since the mid 1990s (MUDs) and has been called as an expert witness in the past to defeat some of these "virtual currency" patents.
- fragsworth 9y agoHey. Developer of Clicker Heroes here. More examples of prior art are very helpful, so that would help us out a lot. Do you have any examples of any of these MUDs that had virtual currency?
- jasonlaramburu 9y agoHave you ever considered taking action against the lawyers representing the trolls? Most likely they are working on a contingency basis and will keep 1/3 of whatever the trolls can extract from you. It's likely that their friends, family and the people in their community have no idea they engage in these activities. I have heard of defendants using PR campaigns effectively in these cases. Oftentimes a potential $10k payout is not worth your friends and neighbors finding out how you really make your money.
- fragsworth 9y agoI already named them and dumped the documents, and stated facts. I worry that doing anything to proactively impact their lives in a bad way could be used against us in a trial, because they could highlight it to paint a pretty bad picture, making us look really bad in front of a jury. We haven't done anything like that yet. It doesn't matter that they started it or that we are in the right. If you ruin someone's life, it looks bad even if you had a good reason to do it. They're the ones ruining our lives right now. I think a court will also see it this way. I think that helps us get them to walk away.
- PhasmaFelis 9y agoIf you already don't have much money for legal fees, making things personal with an unscrupulous lawyer who doesn't mind filing petty lawsuits seems like a dangerous idea.
- jasonlaramburu 9y agoPlease don't take any of my comments as legal advice but I have been through this nonsense before. The unfortunate thing about these lawsuits is that if you try to fight/defend them through traditional means, you almost always end up spending more than what you would have spent in an early negotiated settlement (especially when your time and stress are factored in). Unless the defendant has a lawyer friend willing to work at a discounted rate, $35k will not get him very far at all, especially if this goes to trial. Who is this expert hired by GTX? He appears to be a startup guy himself so it's surprising he would get involved in this. It might be worth reaching out to him to confirm 1) that his signed statement is legitimate and 2) try to reason with him.
- bitexploder 9y agoLook up Diku MUD family. I used to hack on a population CircleMUD derivative many many years ago. We had virtual currency...people regularly bought and traded items for gold.
- berdon 9y agohttp://www.dcastle.org/ http://www.dcastle.org/ They've existed since 92 and had in game currency bought with cash since around that time.
- mmihaly 9y agoYeah. I'm the friend he mentioned. Achaea.com was the first game in the world to use virtual currency/goods as its business model, back in 1997. Still live today. My company's at ironrealms.com. I mailed you offering help.
- lostcolony 9y agoHoly crap. Blast from the past. Thanks so much for making those games; I killed years in high school on Achaea.
- mmihaly 9y agoGlad to hear it!
- fragsworth 9y agoWow. I actually remember playing your game when I was 17. I can't remember details about the virtual currency though. The '838 patent was filed in 2000 (which is the effective date, 2007 is just the processing date). Did Achaea have virtual currency before then? If so, that would help us a lot.
- stale2002 9y agoOne I just remembered from a decade or 2 ago: Realm of the Mad God. Its a browser based 16 bit mmo, and used the free to play, micro transactions model way before it was popular.
- MereInterest 9y agoThat one was released in June 2011, according to Wikipedia, so not useful as prior at to a patent filed in the 2000s.
- stale2002 9y agoReally? Man, it is hard to keep track of time.
- sologoub 9y agoUltima Online launched in 1997, but development goes back way before that. A core part of the game economy was gold that could be used for trade between players, as well as NPCs (non-player characters). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online
- HeyWolfey 9y agoHoly shit it's Wolfey. It's me, Patrick from Meteor Games. Lemme go through my rolodex of lawyers and see who owes me a favor. In the meantime, look into legal insurance. You mind find an affordable solution to drive these cunt fucks into the earth for cheap.
- jcl 9y agoFWIW, This w3.org web standard for per-fee-links (dated Aug 1999) describes a micropayment system that can be denominated in arbitrary currencies, giving "airline miles" as one possible example: https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-Micropayment-Markup/#Appendix%207 https://www.w3.org/TR/WD-Micropayment-Markup/#Appendix%207
- hboon 9y agoOff-topic, but maybe because of this thread's context, I recognise your name from my time on Aardwolf ~20 years ago. Thank you!