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Unity patents ECS

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Re: Unity patents ECS

#81

Post by shock-value »

Arwill wrote: post #76
shock-value wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My read (and from what I know of ECS) is that it's basically claiming a system which automatically organizes the memory layouts of instances of different types of "entities" (i.e. "type" meaning which "components" it includes) in an efficient manner. Here, an "entity" is just an object identifier (integer, or whatever). A "component" is a specific set of data relevant to some function (e.g. position component would h…

Splitting up objects attributes into separate arrays is required if you plan to work with those data on the GPU. I did it when working with Java and OpenCL, and wanted to efficiently access the same data trough Java objects and also in OpenCL kernels. OpenCL does not know about objects, like Java, but it can access data in arrays, so practically every Java object holds an index into the arrays of the different attrib…

Yeah I think it's a huge roadblock for Unreal. Though, I'm not sure that the patent would preclude a system which organizes memory layouts at build-time rather than runtime (though I could be wrong about that). Could be a good opening for Unreal, though to this point I think they've (disappointingly) shown little interest in any kind of ECS system.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#82

Post by letsInvalid »

shock-value wrote: post #78
letsInvalid wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, 2019 is out How about 2013: https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/general-and-ga... I use a heavily updated version of this for my own projects

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.

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.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#83

Post by bob1029 »

IMO, this is too broad a patent to be enforceable. I have built many systems that look exactly like this over the years. The terminology I use is simply "data-driven". Nothing so fancy as "Entity Component System", which is just an opinionated take on the more fundamental idea of arrays of structs (aka "data").

My take is that this patent is part of a defense-in-aggregate strategy which leverages a larger portfolio. I don't think a legal team would stand on this one alone in a AAA vs AAA studio fight.

I usually visualize large corporations pointing patent piles at each other as if they are locked in some sort of cold war. I have zero fears that this patent would be used against me or any of my work.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#84

Post by ilaksh »

shock-value wrote: post #44
jjoonathan wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait just one second... they managed to actually get a completely generic description of ECS into the claims? EDIT: yes, yes they did. What you see above is in fact clam 1, in it's entirety. This is worse than usual. Usually "X patents (common thing)" headlines actually mean "X patents (common thing with weird twist)," which is a great deal less severe. This really looks like Unity got an actual patent on the actual…

Not really. To me the novelty in the first claim is that they have a system which automatically determines an optimal memory layout, even in the face of new combinations of components within a newly created entity. A typical hand-crafted ECS system wouldn't likely infringe -- it's more likely that the memory layout was defined in advance. I guess this will be a major roadblock to Unreal Engine offering such an automa…

What exactly is their system for determining optimal layout? It must be disclosed in detail. They can't just claim that any approach like that is theirs.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#85

Post by zubspace »

timmytokyo wrote: post #55

Ironically, Unity's ECS development effort has gone radio-silent in the last few months. Their latest versions of the Unity Editor (2021.1+) are no longer compatible with ECS, and Unity's forum reps have not responded to the many game devs left in limbo and begging for info or an update. Something with ECS development is clearly going haywire, and the silence from the Unity people is troubling.

I know what ECS is and why it's needed for some games. But for a large group of game developers that transition was simply too overwhelming I think.

Not just the nomenclature: ECS, DOTS, Burst Compiler, SRP/HDRP/LWRP/URP.... It's an endless list of confusing terms... But moreover those concepts are not so easy to grasp and to use in code by just looking at a few examples.

After doing lots of small 'experiments' in Unity (the old way without ECS) I started to realize, that more and more I was fighting the engine, trying to use or build upon features which were half-baked, buggy or simply not developer friendly. And instead of first fixing those things Unity decided to go all in on ECS.

There came Godot, a breath of fresh air without all the cruft and without all those confusing terms. I think Unity will have a hard time in the future: On one hand there's Unreal which caters the AAA market and there are smaller engines like Godot for the indie crowd. Unity is the odd one in between.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#86

Post by btilly »

hackthefender wrote: post #18

Patent lawyer here. There is a lot of dubious stuff already in this thread, so be careful with legal opinions from people on the internet. Some relevant claim language is below. Of course a lot of this stuff has been known for a while, but you have to have everything together--or an evidenced argument that combining things in this way would have been obvious--before you can conclude anything about the validity of the…

Not a patent lawyer here. But I'm unfortunate enough to have several patents to my name, owned by past employers.

My impression of everyone that I have ever heard from, or dealt with, involved with patents is that you all are so firmly in regulatory capture that your heads are captured up your collective asses, and the tech industry is being hampered by the resulting legal quagmires.

In a sane world, the entire description that you gave falls squarely under "generic computers doing generic computer things". And therefore by Alice v. CLS Bank as decided by the Supreme Court, it should not be patentable. Period.

Unfortunately the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has gone rogue, and you're almost certainly correct that they will happily grant use of the patent to any patent troll lucky enough to get it. And the Patent Office is so firmly in the land of regulatory capture that bad patents like this have no trouble being issued.

And the result is that people whose work ACTUALLY achieves "Progress of Science and useful Arts" is hampered by this crazy system. And our patent system continues to undermine its stated Constitutional purpose.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#87

Post by CreepGin »

timmytokyo wrote: post #55

Ironically, Unity's ECS development effort has gone radio-silent in the last few months. Their latest versions of the Unity Editor (2021.1+) are no longer compatible with ECS, and Unity's forum reps have not responded to the many game devs left in limbo and begging for info or an update. Something with ECS development is clearly going haywire, and the silence from the Unity people is troubling.

I can't imagine them to just continue DOTS like normal after going silent for so long. If they don't axe it, then they may choose to do something drastically different than before, like automatic ECS conversion under the hood.

ECS is really good for things that scale. Architecturally, it has both pros and cons to OOP. After working with ECS for a few years, I came to the conclusion that OOP is still the best for behavioral richness.

The current state of DOTS is just sad as it's affecting a lot of developments such as Tiny, unity.physics, dots audio, dots animation, etc...

Burst and Jobs are probably the best things that came out of Unity's initial push for DOTS.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#88

Post by [deleted] »

tinco wrote: post #79
k__ wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't ECS systems much older? I remember reading about them in my CS studies, and that was pre 2011.

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…

[deleted]

Re: Unity patents ECS

#89

Post by nixpulvis »

hackthefender wrote: post #18

Patent lawyer here. There is a lot of dubious stuff already in this thread, so be careful with legal opinions from people on the internet. Some relevant claim language is below. Of course a lot of this stuff has been known for a while, but you have to have everything together--or an evidenced argument that combining things in this way would have been obvious--before you can conclude anything about the validity of the…

What the hell did I just read? Sounds like Java to me.

Re: Unity patents ECS

#90

Post by AlbertCory »

lamontcg wrote: post #63
jcranmer wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 some…

> "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?

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