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this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2023
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This sounds like shape keys, which is a technique already widely used in games and animation today. When you get shot in Battlefield, your character model plays a “getting shot” animation. When your character runs, it plays a “running” animation. When your character gets shot while running, these two animations are combined - it’s not a separate “shot while running” animation.
Would love to know if there’s actually some novel aspect to this “invention” but it seems more likely that this is yet another bullshit patent approved by a clueless clerk who did zero searches for prior art.
Edit: Read the patent. Not only does it describe nothing novel, it doesn’t even document what they did. All it says is basically “we created animation blocks and combine them”. The details are just a bunch of bullshit jargon spew:
Their novel discovery: They figured out nobody had patented this yet
I think this would make it tough to enforce the patent if it's actually commonly used. If I were somehow granted a patent on tap dancing, its common usage by others before me would probably cause my patent to be invalidated if I then tried to sue a tap dancer.
Not a patent lawyer, but IIRC, US patent law had some protections for things (including non-patented) that are already common practice.
EDIT: Clarity
Software patents get away with stupid shit like this all the time. Patent trolls claim they invented a software pattern and then sue everyone who uses it.
They would only be able to get away with this if it had already been determined that they did indeed invent that thing. Many choose not to fight cease and desists when it would be in their best interest to counter claim.
You can't grant a patent for something that is already in the public domain at the time of filing, regardless of whether or not that thing is currently patent protected.
Edit: this is such a funny comment to want to downvote. "Fuck you with your legitimate factual information!"
Novelty is assessed against all publicly disclosed prior art, not just the stuff that has been patented.
If I publish content on a webpage that could be used as prior art later on assessing novelty.
If I invent a special lawnmower and only show my friends and family and never sell it or patent it, that could still count as public disclosure and be used against anyone wishing to patent a similar lawnmower.
It sounds more like they're using more fundamental movements than what you're describing, not running animation+shot animation but more like:
Both reloading a particular weapon and mantling over a walk require you to lift your arms, so the root movement of lifting your arm to reload an LMG is the same one used to grab a ledge overhead, etc.
Basically they're just categorizing movements based on use case and direction so they can string those individual movements into different and unique patterns for individual actions.
Pressing an elevator button uses the same arm movement as opening a door, which uses the same wrist rotation movement as turning the key in a car, etc. So they just break down individual movements in the same way an LLM breaks down a voice into phonetics to string new words together.
It’s definitely possible they’re doing something novel internally, but the details that would support that interpretation are missing from the filing. One of the requirements for patents is that it “sufficient disclosure of the invention so that it can be reproduced by others”. I would say I qualify as an expert in the domain covered, and I have no idea what they’re actually doing based on the patent alone.
Software patents need to die.
I work in patents. If it wasn't novel it wouldn't be granted, believe me.
My experience with clients has led me to never trust lay people's judgements on what is or is not novel.
Feel free to actually read the examiner's comments in this patent application for an actually full understanding of the process
Or better still if you think you are able to assess novelty though a 5 minute cursory read of a patent without any reference to prior art, feel free to do my job for me. You're clearly much more efficient and unbiased and definitely aren't cutting any corners in your evaluation. Both in understanding the law and understanding how to assess novelty in a proper way.
I work in computer graphics software. My former employer preferred that engineers liberally apply for “defensive” patents because of how often people would get a patent for something we already did and then try to sue us for it. Plus we got a small cash bonus when our patents were approved. Through this process, I was granted six patents for my work there. It would be unwise to put something to text that could be used as evidence to invalidate the patents, so I’ll just say that my opinion on how low the bar is to getting software patents approved is definitely well-informed.
I’ll admit I have little understanding of the legal definition of “novel”, but insofar as the intent of the patent system, the current bar is way too low for software patents. Although remedied recently, the plethora of software patents that still exist for “(Something people have done for decades) but do it on a computer” is ridiculous.
If it was something you already did prior to filing and you could prove it then their case would be extremely flimsy, but I do understand where you come from.
It really depends on jurisdiction, in the UK it's not possible to even patent software. In Europe it is, but regulations are strict. The US patent law is a little bit wonky in this regard.
A brief search shows a variety of publications that seem to do what is described by the patent:
https://history.siggraph.org/learning/neural-animation-layering-for-synthesizing-martial-arts-movements-by-starke-zhao-zinno-and-komura/
https://advances.realtimerendering.com/destiny/siggraph2014/animation/index.html
https://www.cs.ucdavis.edu/~neff/papers/correlationMapsEG07.pdf
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AnimationLayers.html
You've not even referenced the claims of the patent, which is actually what is protected. It's already extremely likely the examiner has flagged these up as prior art and more and still passed it as allowable after a thorough novelty search and several rounds of amendments. Lots of things are sort of like other inventions but what they actually do lies outside of the claim scope.
The invention is not what is patented, the claims are. There are undoubtedly novel features in the claims or again the examiner wouldn't allow it.
Barring a performance of a full novelty search where you break down the claims and compare them to the prior art individually, you aren't convincing me that the claims aren't novel.
Assessing novelty is one of the most difficult parts of being a patent attorney and can't be done with a cursory search.
This is basically a description of a game engine that supports movement and animation. Descent (1994) would be the earliest production use of such an engine.
Congratulations, you just described “variables”, a concept at least as old as ENIAC (1945).
Yes, that’s one way to describe “animation”
Variables having a default value is the default behavior of most programming languages and software systems.
Yea, we’re talking about animation here. Default value of animation description = default animation.
Inheritance, a property of most software designs since the 1980s.
Storing configuration in a data file. You’d be hard pressed to find an alternative. Maybe some genius will come along and find some way to represent it in JSON…
This seems to be the main claim of the patent, but seems to have a huge amount of prior art (see links). “Parametric blends” and other terms are just jargon.
Oh my god. Really? Shall we also include “doubles”, “halfs”, or maybe “rationals”?
“Translation table” seems to just be referring to the graph topology of the system. Yes, graphs are the most common way to represent arbitrary N:M relationships.
Node-based editing; standard practice in all 3D modeling.
Yes, you already described what a game engine is and an animation system is. Game engines certainly do have animation systems…
Picking animation keys based on game logic. What else would you base it on exactly?
Yes, default values do be defaultin’.
Yep, software sure does run on computers. Computers are neat. And they have storage.
Are we really going to enumerate all the permutations of engine + animation + defaults claims?
I guess we are…
You've not even remotely began to asses novelty properly but kudos for trying.
All the claims except 8 are “obvious” IMO. Claim 8 fails novelty because of the huge amount of prior art on the matter.
Note that I’m using “novelty” and “obvious” according to their english definitions, and the intent of patent protection. If they’re different in practice, that’s a failing of current patent law.
For reference, here’s what I would consider to be a “good” software patent: https://patents.justia.com/patent/6721362
They also test for obviousness mate.
If you think you can do better than a patent office examiner get on it because they're extremely well paid.
Or maybe you could stop and draw a line under what you think is correct. Have you ever considered the possibility that actually you haven't got the first clue how to properly analyse a patent because it's a profession that requires extensive training and eye to detail?
I know on the internet it's fun to pretend you actually know everything because everything is a Google search away but to even properly contextualise and separate good patents and bad patents isn't a skill you can just pick up in 5 minutes to win an argument.
Sir you are too level headed for the internet
It's a daily curse.
Not shape keys, but something more akin to Unity's animation layers. This kinda stuff has been in games for a decade or so.
This has been done for decades. Anyone that respects this patent is an idiot.