Re: [Algorithms] Collision detection patent

[Pierre T. <p.t...@wa...>]

John Nagle works for Animats, and more information can probably be found
there:
http://www.animats.com/topics/patents.html

He's also the one responsible for one of the most recent improvements of the
SOLID 2.0 collision detection library (that is, he hinted Gino Van Den
Bergen with a way to handle pathological cases for which the original GJK
method failed).

Now, the above patent covers Animat's last version of "Falling Bodies", a
Softimage plug-in. I don't know more about it, but I hope it only covers
their "slip control" method, and what they *really* invented - or more
precisely, I think they managed to make an old method work, which had
previously been left dead in the dust.

The patent you point out seems a lot more shameful, but so does the famous
Pixar patent about that utterly obvious way of subdividing vertex parameters
in subdivision surfaces. And I don't tell you about the myriad of wacky
patents you can find in data compression. (I think you get dozens of them
even for RLE)

I think (I hope) this won't change anything for game developers.

----- Original Message -----
From: Michael S. Harrison <mic...@ud...>
To: <gda...@li...>
Sent: Tuesday, August 15, 2000 8:46 PM
Subject: [Algorithms] Collision detection patent


> I have no idea if this is going to start an off-topic patent war, but I'm
interested in the reaction here on the following patent.
http://www.patents.ibm.com/details?pn=US06067096__
>
> I read about it in the latest Game Developer and did a bit of reading
through the patent claims since it appears that Mr. Nagle is attempting to
patent methods which have not only been written about prior to his
application (March, '98) but actually implemented in our, and other people's
engines, prior to '98.
>
> According to GDMag, he actually intends to go after game companies which
infringe his patent.
>
> Thoughts?
>
>
> - Michael Harrison
>   High Plains Coder,
>   United Developers / Inertia, LLC
>   Work log @ http://lynx.inertiagames.com
>
>
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