Unity patents ECS

To the defendant who doesn't have $500,000 or $400,000 (maybe $1-10k is available), whether it's court or IPR seems like splitting hairs. It doesn't matter what kind of legal proceeding, because they can't afford to participate in any legal proceedings at this level anyway. They also can't afford to pay for more than superficial advice.

What I'm getting at is: $500k is more than most people's entire assets, and more than the assets in many small businesses and organisations. With software patents like this one, most infringements are likely done by the "little guy", who can end up threatened when they publish code, or have to operate in fear of that happening, if they know about it. They simply cannot challenge the patent through any legal method that has a fee like $500k.

If the rational closed-source company will pay Unity's hypothetical fee because it's less than the IPR fee, and the open-source defendant doesn't have any choice because they can't afford any of the options... who is left that is both motivated and capable to use the IPR procedure?

In the case of this particular patent by Unity, the techniques are things people thought of decades ago, but like most "inventions" of this kind, it's only when you have a specific project (typically paid) where they'd come in useful that you typically get around to using it. Nobody has time to document and explain every little "invention of the day" every time they think of a new technique just to feed the prior art corpus. I tried that once. When you've come to see how low the threshold is for patentability in software (and to be honest, in some digital hardware too), it's seems literally impossible to write down every patentable insight as fast as they come once you're on a roll; you'd need a support team just to do the documenting.

It's upsetting to think up a technique, flesh it out, not have a use for it for 10 years (you're busy, right?), then find one day when you want to use the fruits of your own figuring out 10 years prior on a project, it cannot be used any more. Even more so when it follows naturally from techniques dev communities have been discussing for years in the field.

(A number of us also have stories of publishing a sketch of a technique on some forum, only to find it patented later. It happened to me with a texture-mapping graphics technique in the 90s, where I found a later patent actually cited my Usenet post; in practice that meant I couldn't develop it further because the obvious next steps were blocked.)

jlokier, if you're assuming I'm in favor of software patents, you haven't been paying attention.

Developers have been writing screeds like this for almost 40 years, but nothing changes. That's because the people in power don't want them to change. Do you want to just keep complaining, or do you want to do something?

> if you're assuming I'm in favor of software patents, you haven't been paying attention

I wasn't assuming that, but I was assuming from the way you wrote it, that you think $500k is an ok price for people to continue practicing the software engineering they were already doing. It might just be a language interpretation thing from the way you wrote about that. And because of this:

>> That's not court; that's an IPR [1].

I consider almost all the interesting defendents to be people who will not be able to afford the IPR procedure, and the above seems a mere technicality from that perspective. For those people, it might as well be a court case in spirit. I.e. something they can't afford, that involves a panel judging something and corporate lawyers making arguments that determine someone's future.

So it seems only relevant to people who might be serious about doing the IPR. That's what gave me the impression you consider it feasible for typical defendants. But then:

>> As for defense strategy: you're right, but Unity might want a quick hit. They don't want a lengthy proceeding where they might lose.

You wrote "but", yet seem to agree with what I wrote on each point here, which amounts to nobody having the combination of motivation and capability to use the IPR procedure.

> Do you want to just keep complaining,

If you're assuming I'm complaining, you haven't been paying attention. I'm saying that when it appears to be suggested (possibly by way it's written) that it's an ordinary and reasonable $500k fee for a defendant to overturn a patent via IPR, that suggests to me (and probably others) that the author thinks of defendants as the kinds of companies or individuals with that level of funding capability.

I probably didn't state my case well, but the gist is two things: 1. I think the the vast majority of interesting defendents (infringers and potential infringers) don't have that kind of funding capability. 2. A genuine question (which hasn't been answered): Who would pay for the IPR, when neither the small-time defendant or the company who can pay the patent holder's fee has both motivation and capability to do the IPR?

> or do you want to do something?

You appear to be suggesting an alternative course of action than writing on HN, something to do with people in power, but I can't guess what "something" you have mind. Do you have something concrete in mind, or is that just a generic complaint on HN that there's too much complaining? :-)

Well said. Incumbents "Industrial Incumbents"

You didn't patent that did you?

Caveat that this is second hand info based entirely on GameFromScratch (I've avoided playing with it because of his updates) -- he's recorded a new review on afaics every recent Lumberyard release, and currently seems answer is "yes, ish, the actual engine seems reasonable, but the process of actually getting that engine up and running is staggeringly bad, albeit 100× better than it was six months ago"