Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in our game

Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by mmihaly on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:00PM (#16507135)

Yeah. 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by fragsworth on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:26PM (#16507263)

Wow. 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by mmihaly on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:44PM (#16507568)

Yep, we started doing it in 1997 and have plenty of documentation to that effect.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by Veelox on Saturday March 03, 2018 @10:51AM (#16509762)

I love seeing patent trolls taken down.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by aagha on Saturday March 03, 2018 @11:31AM (#16510012)

Wow. Did you file a patent?

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by stjohnswarts on Saturday March 03, 2018 @04:06PM (#16511576)

You are the real MVP. Carry on.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by smoyer on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:02PM (#16507609)

Their patent is for digital tokens ... Clearly rubies are your "unit of currency". Is there any chance it was supposed to be Rubles but was misspelled?

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by lostcolony on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:13PM (#16507205)

Holy crap. Blast from the past. Thanks so much for making those games; I killed years in high school on Achaea.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by mmihaly on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:19PM (#16507233)

Glad to hear it!

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by ActsJuvenile on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:31PM (#16507284)

For the rest of the HN community, how do you fight patent trolls like these? How much does it cost ballpark to defend a product?

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by mmihaly on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:55PM (#16507593)

I don't really know the ins and outs of how. I've never been sued by patent trolls. I've been threatened, just responded with some of the evidence I have and a, "Are you sure you really want to do this?" and I never hear from them again.

When I've helped defend other companies (two of which are among the largest/most prominent in the games industry), I've just provided expert witness testimony as to the existence of prior art. I've never had to testify about it in court, so I'm fairly sure that each time the trolls dropped it before going to court.

As to how much it costs - no idea. They had pricey lawyers though, so there's certainly some cost involved. I suppose it depends on how big the balls on the troll are, or perhaps how easily they think the defendant will be intimidated into just settling.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by MrLeap on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:19PM (#16507648)

You're a good person. I hope a lawyer with your character contacts you about pursuing sanctions for vexatious litigation against these guys.

At least invalidating the patent.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by ehnto on Saturday March 03, 2018 @12:55AM (#16508135)

How come if they have sued and lost based on prior art, the patent is already invalid?

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by jaredklewis on Saturday March 03, 2018 @02:24AM (#16508326)

They probably have never lost in court but rather settled or dropped the cases before they get to court.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by dang on Saturday March 03, 2018 @06:55PM (#16512450)

Sorry you got rate-limited in the comments here; it's a restriction that new accounts are subject to because of past abuses. I've marked your account legit so it won't happen again. Welcome to HN. We hope you'll stick around!

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by jasonlaramburu on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:55PM (#16507762)

The following is not legal advice and should not be construed as such. Short answer is that it really depends on your strategy and the rate of your firm. For example, a colleague of mine works at a top tier firm. They were hired to defend a major auto maker against a troll. They took the case to trial, won and then successfully countersued for repayment of fees. The whole thing took a couple years (patent cases move at a glacial pace), and the lawyers ended up billing the car company for several million dollars. I also don’t know that they were ever able to successfully collect on the countersuit judgement.

Another strategy is to try and invalidate the patent via the USPTO before it goes to trial. This often does work with bogus patents, but it’s still not cheap. I have heard the ballpark figure is $100k.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by PaulAJ on Saturday March 03, 2018 @06:15AM (#16508802)

This is an effective threat because it means they lose the whole patent, not just the case against you.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by patentatt on Tuesday March 06, 2018 @11:10AM (#16529699)

$100k for a complete end-to-end IPR is at the bottom of the market. You can find it, but $2-300k is more the norm.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by greglindahl on Saturday March 03, 2018 @03:51AM (#16508500)

Play by mail games have you beat by decades. Which is the usual problem with patent claims (good!) and claiming credit for inventing an idea (endless arguments :-))

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by Im_Mr_Manager on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:30PM (#16507279)

Just wanted to note it was filed Apr. 21, 2000. 2007 is when the patent was given.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by mmihaly on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:45PM (#16507571)

Nod, thanks. Makes no difference to our prior art, happily, as we were three years before that.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by rayalez on Saturday March 03, 2018 @12:37AM (#16508083)

Whoah this is so awesome. Thank you for making such great games!

Amazing who you can see on HN...

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by endgame on Saturday March 03, 2018 @07:22AM (#16508971)

I've spent so many hours on so many alts on IRE games. I don't know whether to thank you or curse you.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by jasonlaramburu on Friday March 02, 2018 @07:44PM (#16507056)

Have 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by fragsworth on Friday March 02, 2018 @07:52PM (#16507098)

I 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by PhasmaFelis on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:21PM (#16507470)

If 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by jasonlaramburu on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:34PM (#16507684)

Please 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by jcl on Saturday March 03, 2018 @12:49AM (#16508113)

FWIW, 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

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by sologoub on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:56PM (#16507379)

Ultima 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

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by bitexploder on Friday March 02, 2018 @07:55PM (#16507109)

Look 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by berdon on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:53PM (#16507369)

http://www.dcastle.org/

They've existed since 92 and had in game currency bought with cash since around that time.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by stale2002 on Friday March 02, 2018 @08:23PM (#16507248)

One 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.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by MereInterest on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:33PM (#16507518)

That one was released in June 2011, according to Wikipedia, so not useful as prior at to a patent filed in the 2000s.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by stale2002 on Friday March 02, 2018 @10:38PM (#16507706)

Really? Man, it is hard to keep track of time.

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Re:Patent trolls are shaking us down for selling “rubies” in... by HeyWolfey on Friday March 02, 2018 @09:00PM (#16507397)

Holy 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.

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