Some of you might have heard of PalTalk's recent patent trolling in their effort to squash innovations in MMORPG games for their own monetary gain. While designing a recent project I have to do for an assignment, I realized something.

The description of the patent went something like "A virtual environment over the network where every client sees the same environment". Now that is clearly a horrible patent designed to give a monopolizing control over things like MMORPGs. However, to support this counter-claim, I'm going to give a little explanation on the Model / View / Controller design pattern.

In a typical MMORPG, you sure are in an environment online of which everyone else can see. You can dissect the general form of an MMORPG using the Model/View/Controller design pattern. You can abbreviate Model/View/Controller with MVC. Patenting an entire design pattern is even worse than the PgUp/PgDown key patent Microsoft got earlier. It's things like this which hurt innovation and do the exact opposite of what patents are supposed to do.

Let's examine how an MMORPG could easily be an instance of a MVC system. This is also a good practice for anyone who wants to design an MMORPG. The Model of the MVC is the environment itself. This includes players, enemies, items, places, or anything else. This Model is located on the MMORPG server itself, there is usually only one per server, and it can change. The View of the MVC would be every single client. When you log in, you download information about the Model and a copy of the Model is displayed on your screen. This is clearly a View- and if the Model changes, new information is given to you and you can see that in your View. The Controller is also the client! You use the keyboard and mouse to send requests to the Model, and the Model can change. This change is then sent back to all the clients again for the View.

It would seem as though the patent is in the implementation of this particular MVC and not the MVC itself. However, the whole point of MVC design is that the model, view, and controller are separated. The form and techniques for handling all of this are nearly identical for all MVC designs. Anyone who has written a well designed GUI interface will understand this. Your window is the view, which shows the current state of the Model. The controls are CONTROLLERS to send signals to the MODEL to update the MODEL, and in turn the MODEL is reflected in the VIEWS.

On the other hand, if you are going to make the argument that PalTalk's patent is of a specific implementation of the MVC design pattern to solve a particular problem, you will have to understand that the particular implementation itself cannot have anything to do with an MMORPG (Which are PalTalk's targets) unless the patent is specifically for an MMORPG system. If you want to encompass an MMORPG with your patent, you would have to do so by patenting the MVC design pattern itself- therefore rendering the patent as a form of monopoly. This would mean that their second-rate video conferencing software would not be covered by the patent they hold should they make an argument that they hold a patent for an MMORPG.

I'm always against companies doing things like this to strangle technology that could bring us together. To stomp on all of the wonderful things that came out of competition of these MMORPG companies and their games out of greed- it's a pretty vile thing to do. At least Microsoft has provided the world with a standardized operating system in which these MMORPGs run, what has PalTalk contributed to the world which has not already been done in greater quality by someone else?