4 ms·

It's aggravating that parents are purposefully written in a language that makes it harder to read. What I could gather from it is that this is just an impleme

It's aggravating that parents are purposefully written in a language that makes it harder to read. What I could gather from it is that this is just an implementation of archetype-based ECS. Which just means that entities with the same set of components (that is, the same "archetype") are allocated together. But I don't know whether they are patenting archetypes in general or just a narrow usage. Now I have a question: is it possible that things published before the date of the patent (24 march 2020) are infringing on the patent? Or, on the contrary, things published before this date can actually be prior art? Because, there are Rust ECS libraries that use archetypes, like for example legion https://crates.io/crates/legion/0.1.0 https://crates.io/crates/legion/0.1.0 - that had its first release on 9 march 2019. And even at this date, the concept of using archetypes to optimize the memory layout of ECS applications is not novel. More about this here https://csherratt.github.io/blog/posts/specs-and-legion/ https://csherratt.github.io/blog/posts/specs-and-legion/ I would say that the google v8's Javascript optimization, where they create a new struct layout for each possible combination of object fields, might as well count as prior art. It doesn't use ECS though: but I don't think that prior art needs to check all technology boxes. I argue that, in light of v8's trick to turn objects with dynamic fields (traditionally stored as a hash table) into objects with statically known fields, then ECS archetypes are not novel enough for a patent. (And I don't even know if the v8 optimization is itself novel)

jcranmer 5y ago
> Now I have a question: is it possible that things published before the date of the patent (24 march 2020) are infringing on the patent? Or, on the contrary, things published before this date can actually be prior art? You have to look at the date of filing, not date of publication. The date of filing is June 12, 2018 (patents take a few years to issue these days). So March 9, 2019 cannot be prior art.
- nextaccountic 5y ago
  This is very very concerning. Not only Amethyst's legion is archetype based, but also Bevy's ECS. So the Rust gamedev ecosystem is somewhat tainted (depending on the specifics on the patent and the source code of those frameworks, but I think that even reading the patent is risky - or at least I was told that, because if you know about the contents of the patent, infringing it is worse)
  - jcelerier 5y ago
    Isn't that the same principle that e.g. https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/master/doc/html/poly_collection.html https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/master/doc/html/poly_collecti... which has existed since 2016 and described since 2014 (at least: https://bannalia.blogspot.com/2014/05/fast-polymorphic-collections.html https://bannalia.blogspot.com/2014/05/fast-polymorphic-colle... ) ?
- letsInvalid 5y ago
  Ok, 2019 is out How about 2013: https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/general-and-gameplay-programming/implementing-component-entity-systems-r3382/ https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/general-and-ga... I use a heavily updated version of this for my own projects
  - shock-value 5y ago
    It's not relevant. Unity is claiming an automated system for determining an optimal memory layout as entities with new combinations of components are generated (at runtime). Such a layout defined in advance would not infringe.
    - letsInvalid 5y ago
      That’s not exactly novel either. I’ve seen engines that do that and updated my own code to do so. Unfortunately git says that was added after they filed. Their employees could have easily pulled this from community discourse. What’s probably needed is community backlash; no more unity games. It worked with Apple.
    - jhgb 5y ago
      > Unity is claiming an automated system for determining an optimal memory layout as entities with new combinations of components are generated So they've patented a database server, basically.
      - jeffparsons 5y ago
        I was wondering when this would come up. Everything people are inventing in the "ECS" space, including the very concept of "ECS" itself is just concepts from databases being adapted to storing small amounts of ephemeral data that needs to be manipulated very quickly in-memory rather than large amounts of data that need to be persisted reliably on disk. The idea that there's anything patent-worthy in automatically storing like combinations of data with like combinations of data for efficiency is... patently absurd. But that's where the patent system is, now, I suppose. It's now mostly just a tool to help incumbents raise the barrier to entry so they can fend new entrants off with lawyers rather than merit.
- lamontcg 5y ago
  If someone online talked about archetypes earlier than June 12, 2018 that can be prior art. You don't need to have working code to take on a patent. If someone posted a medium article, or even some kind of proof of concept or cobbled together POC that'd be enough. (I think really any kind of proof that you had the idea before that date is good enough -- a personal diary would work in principle, but you'd need to somehow prove that you wrote your thoughts down on the date and didn't forge it after the fact)
  - AlbertCory 5y ago
    > "a personal diary would work in principle, but you'd need to somehow prove that you wrote your thoughts down on the date and didn't forge it after the fact" Patent agent here, not patent lawyer. (that means I passed the patent bar exam and could write your patent, but could not sue anyone over it.) Wrong, wrong, wrong. Prior art has to be "published" (and there is a whole body of case law about what that means). Maybe you are thinking of the old "first to invent" rule?
    - ska 5y ago
      This is correct, although published is pretty broad it doesn't include everything under the sun. The real problem is that the patent examiners are not in general required to look at the whole breadth of what is published, just what is in the patent databases. As a result there can be clear prior art, but unless it gets fed in during the review process, the practical way to resolve that is likely to end up in court, and likely to be expensive. Of course often "clear prior art" isn't too. Hence the process to sort it out.
      - AlbertCory 5y ago
        Interesting side note about non-patent prior art (by the way, the examiners do, most of the time, look for it): I was told that a proposal to require the examiners to use Google was rejected by the union: if you're going to require us to do more work, then you have to pay us more. This was back in 2012 or so. I have no idea if now they have to use Google, but they only get about a day and a half on each patent (again, this is old data).
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- k__ 5y ago
  Aren't ECS systems much older? I remember reading about them in my CS studies, and that was pre 2011.
  - tinco 5y ago
    It's specifically archetype based ECS that's been patented. Like (seemingly) everyone else in gamedev, I've implemented ECS multiple times over the past 10 years. The last time I did it was in Rust, trying to be the first to use Rust's awesome parallel processing constructs to make an automatically parallel ECS, I got distracted halfway through and then specs beat me to it. I'd never seen or heard of archetype based ECS before I first saw Legion and I was very impressed with it. I don't know where they got the idea but it's very worrying if Unity legit came up with this first. I'm not super up to date on what's happening inside AAA studios, but what I've seen in production is that game studios usually manually group components to optimise performance. The automatic grouping in archetypes is definitely not mentioned in any tutorial or game engine architecture I've ever seen before Legion. Edit: creator of bevy has a great initial reaction to this on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/pjtpkj/comment/hbzaz61/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/pjtpkj/comment/hbzaz6...
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
jacques_chester 5y ago
> It's aggravating that parents are purposefully written in a language that makes it harder to read. Legalese is a discovered language. Various phrases are reused because their meaning has been found in previous court cases. Using novel language to express an idea with an existing, court-tested alternative is begging for trouble. Lawyers are not very expensive compared to the consequences of trying to read it yourself. This would still be true even with a less-legal-ly legalease.
euske 5y ago
Now I expect someone to develop an AI-based translation system to convert legalese into layperson's expressions. It could be easier than translating two natural languages.
- brundolf 5y ago
  You might not even need AI if the copied phrases are precise enough (which they’re incentivized to be). Just a regular string search, with annotations and/or a mapping to phrases used by human beings.

jcranmer 5y ago

> Now I have a question: is it possible that things published before the date of the patent (24 march 2020) are infringing on the patent? Or, on the contrary, things published before this date can actually be prior art? You have to look at the date of filing, not date of publication. The date of filing is June 12, 2018 (patents take a few years to issue these days). So March 9, 2019 cannot be prior art.

nextaccountic 5y ago
This is very very concerning. Not only Amethyst's legion is archetype based, but also Bevy's ECS. So the Rust gamedev ecosystem is somewhat tainted (depending on the specifics on the patent and the source code of those frameworks, but I think that even reading the patent is risky - or at least I was told that, because if you know about the contents of the patent, infringing it is worse)
- jcelerier 5y ago
  Isn't that the same principle that e.g. https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/master/doc/html/poly_collection.html https://www.boost.org/doc/libs/master/doc/html/poly_collecti... which has existed since 2016 and described since 2014 (at least: https://bannalia.blogspot.com/2014/05/fast-polymorphic-collections.html https://bannalia.blogspot.com/2014/05/fast-polymorphic-colle... ) ?
letsInvalid 5y ago
Ok, 2019 is out How about 2013: https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/general-and-gameplay-programming/implementing-component-entity-systems-r3382/ https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/general-and-ga... I use a heavily updated version of this for my own projects
- shock-value 5y ago
  It's not relevant. Unity is claiming an automated system for determining an optimal memory layout as entities with new combinations of components are generated (at runtime). Such a layout defined in advance would not infringe.
  - letsInvalid 5y ago
    That’s not exactly novel either. I’ve seen engines that do that and updated my own code to do so. Unfortunately git says that was added after they filed. Their employees could have easily pulled this from community discourse. What’s probably needed is community backlash; no more unity games. It worked with Apple.
  - jhgb 5y ago
    > Unity is claiming an automated system for determining an optimal memory layout as entities with new combinations of components are generated So they've patented a database server, basically.
    - jeffparsons 5y ago
      I was wondering when this would come up. Everything people are inventing in the "ECS" space, including the very concept of "ECS" itself is just concepts from databases being adapted to storing small amounts of ephemeral data that needs to be manipulated very quickly in-memory rather than large amounts of data that need to be persisted reliably on disk. The idea that there's anything patent-worthy in automatically storing like combinations of data with like combinations of data for efficiency is... patently absurd. But that's where the patent system is, now, I suppose. It's now mostly just a tool to help incumbents raise the barrier to entry so they can fend new entrants off with lawyers rather than merit.
lamontcg 5y ago
If someone online talked about archetypes earlier than June 12, 2018 that can be prior art. You don't need to have working code to take on a patent. If someone posted a medium article, or even some kind of proof of concept or cobbled together POC that'd be enough. (I think really any kind of proof that you had the idea before that date is good enough -- a personal diary would work in principle, but you'd need to somehow prove that you wrote your thoughts down on the date and didn't forge it after the fact)
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  > "a personal diary would work in principle, but you'd need to somehow prove that you wrote your thoughts down on the date and didn't forge it after the fact" Patent agent here, not patent lawyer. (that means I passed the patent bar exam and could write your patent, but could not sue anyone over it.) Wrong, wrong, wrong. Prior art has to be "published" (and there is a whole body of case law about what that means). Maybe you are thinking of the old "first to invent" rule?
  - ska 5y ago
    This is correct, although published is pretty broad it doesn't include everything under the sun. The real problem is that the patent examiners are not in general required to look at the whole breadth of what is published, just what is in the patent databases. As a result there can be clear prior art, but unless it gets fed in during the review process, the practical way to resolve that is likely to end up in court, and likely to be expensive. Of course often "clear prior art" isn't too. Hence the process to sort it out.
    - AlbertCory 5y ago
      Interesting side note about non-patent prior art (by the way, the examiners do, most of the time, look for it): I was told that a proposal to require the examiners to use Google was rejected by the union: if you're going to require us to do more work, then you have to pay us more. This was back in 2012 or so. I have no idea if now they have to use Google, but they only get about a day and a half on each patent (again, this is old data).
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
k__ 5y ago
Aren't ECS systems much older? I remember reading about them in my CS studies, and that was pre 2011.
- tinco 5y ago
  It's specifically archetype based ECS that's been patented. Like (seemingly) everyone else in gamedev, I've implemented ECS multiple times over the past 10 years. The last time I did it was in Rust, trying to be the first to use Rust's awesome parallel processing constructs to make an automatically parallel ECS, I got distracted halfway through and then specs beat me to it. I'd never seen or heard of archetype based ECS before I first saw Legion and I was very impressed with it. I don't know where they got the idea but it's very worrying if Unity legit came up with this first. I'm not super up to date on what's happening inside AAA studios, but what I've seen in production is that game studios usually manually group components to optimise performance. The automatic grouping in archetypes is definitely not mentioned in any tutorial or game engine architecture I've ever seen before Legion. Edit: creator of bevy has a great initial reaction to this on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/pjtpkj/comment/hbzaz61/ https://www.reddit.com/r/rust/comments/pjtpkj/comment/hbzaz6...
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

jacques_chester 5y ago

> It's aggravating that parents are purposefully written in a language that makes it harder to read. Legalese is a discovered language. Various phrases are reused because their meaning has been found in previous court cases. Using novel language to express an idea with an existing, court-tested alternative is begging for trouble. Lawyers are not very expensive compared to the consequences of trying to read it yourself. This would still be true even with a less-legal-ly legalease.

euske 5y ago

Now I expect someone to develop an AI-based translation system to convert legalese into layperson's expressions. It could be easier than translating two natural languages.

brundolf 5y ago
You might not even need AI if the copied phrases are precise enough (which they’re incentivized to be). Just a regular string search, with annotations and/or a mapping to phrases used by human beings.