Ask HN: Hit a wall with my ongoing game project because of patents | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Hit a wall with my ongoing game project because of patents

20 points_y2tq21 comments

I've been working on a custom renderer that uses compute shaders to do pathtracing. The idea was to use Rust/WASM/WebGPU so I could upload a demo directly to the web, so people could play it as easily as clicking a link. Additionally I thought that I could achieve acceptable performance with a combination of new techniques and algorithms as well as using lower-fidelity textures+meshes.

Over the past 1.5 years I've basically read every single raytracing paper published in the past 10 years, and have been slowly working to implement relevant papers into this renderer. Recently I found out that one of those papers was patented, and there's no way to use the ideas inside it[1]. This by itself is not a huge issue as I can avoid using the technique and I don't think it will have a massive impact on performance. The bigger issue is that I don't know what other algorithms are patented that I have no idea about. Maybe some of those algorithms are just straight necessary in order to hit any reasonable performance guideline. In that case, this whole project is fucked and I should go do something else.

I feel seriously disheartened about the whole thing now. I do not currently have any income, and I do not have enough money to fight off a lawsuit. Even hiring a lawyer to search for potential patent-infringement seems extremely expensive. I don't know if I should give up on this entirely and move to using a commercial game engine, keep working on this and ignore the existence of patents (except the one I found), keep working on this and search out for more patents to make sure I'm not infringing anything, or do something radically different altogether.

[1] The patent # is 10580193, but I would not recommend looking it up if you are in graphics work due to how willful infringement works.

IANAL but sounds like you're overthinking everything. Don't worry about being sued into oblivion. You have nothing yet worth being sued over. Focus on making something useful. If it is --- you'll have other problems before you have patent infringement problems.

I too am not a lawyer. The current patent owners are Samsung and a Czech university [0], so I agree with this comment.

It is always possible that rent seekers will appear but remember, a good parasite never kills its host, and at present you are unlikely to be worth the energy to attach to (no offence intended).

[0] https://patents.google.com/patent/US10580193B2/en%29

I am also not a lawyer, but the worst problems a startup can have are not ones that break your startup immediately. They are ones that break your project or startup after years of work.

> I am also not a lawyer, but the worst problems a startup can have are not ones that break your startup immediately. They are ones that break your project or startup after years of work.

As someone who has been sued by non-practicing entities related to a patent, it doesn't break the company. They just want money and they make it affordable. They sue you immediately in order to start the negotiations and show their seriousness. Often their license fees are explicitly set to make it cheaper than fighting them in court specifically so that you won't challenge the patent's validity - so you can settle and move on. It is a tax and it can be unfair, but it won't kill your company.

Honestly, can you share one example where a patent license fee killed a start-up company?

I am not a lawyer.

You could have just remained quite and nothing would have come of it. It takes significant technical resources to catch a software patent violation, especially for closed sources ones and no one bothers unless you manage to make a boat load of money. But you publicly posted your concerns and even the patent number, someone will definitely keep tabs on your side projects now.

Negative thoughts do bring bad luck after all :)

Yes, exactly. Do not do this type of patent research in software, it is all bad, unless you are looking to file a patent yourself.

Theoretically, but unlikely unless you get massive, it could also increase your liability as you may now be "willfully violating" a patent from this date onwards, where as if they came after you in the future, you would only be violating it willfully once they inform you of the patent and your potential violation.

Do not do this, there is no point.

But I am not a lawyer.

You have already invested 1.5 years into it and it seems like you're making a cool product. Just continue and focus on creating a great product and deal with the other things later. Chances are no one will bother to contact you unless you become one of the big companies. By then, you will have enough resources to handle it. It is a shame that software patent is hindering innovation instead of promoting it.

I could suggest you two variants of solutions.

First, you could buy few old books with algorithms, where good terms on use IP and just implement them. Usually, this mean, new patents could not prohibit usage of IP which is published before patent appear.

Second, you could join some technology consortium, like OpenGL, or Vulkan, or W3C, or may be even GNU/Posix, and use only technologies, which this consortium linked to, usually membership includes rights to use their IP, and they defend their members from patents issues. This is more expensive than old book, but may include more modern algorithms.

Using any of these variants, you will early know, what you near guaranteed to use, and will have predictable future.

IANAL and also have no experience in this, but there is such a thing as patent and IP insurance. Both offensive and defensive. I am sure there are also companies that can perform code audits to find potential infringements early at varying degrees of quality. That of course all costs money.

The other important thing is to have appropriate incorporation and liability insurance once you are actually exposing yourself as an entity.

Just build the damn thing.

You either need to hire a patent lawyer or be prepared to pay plaintiff's attorney and court costs in the worst case that a patent owner sues you and doesn't want to make a licensing deal. (If going hardcore, you could also try to perform the work of patent lawyer yourself, but you would need to have sufficient patent law knowledge and still assume the risk of missing some unlucky patents with uncooperative owners.) Moderate funding of this risk would be sufficient. If you don't have this initial money but you're confident that you will find certain profit, maybe take a loan?

Many patent owners would be glad to find a new licensee at a fair price. Since you intend to commercialize your project, you will be able to pay reasonable license fees as you make sales.

> You either need to hire a patent lawyer or be prepared to pay plaintiff's attorney and court costs in the worst case that a patent owner sues you and doesn't want to make a licensing deal.

That isn't what I saw...

Being sued by a patent owner, if they are a non-practicing entity, is par for the course, that is often their opening negotiation move. (How do I know you ask? I got sued by one.). The suit is a negotiating tactic to ensure that if you don't settle via negotiation (which is preferred, it is cheaper for the patent owner), the case will force you to. In the case I saw, the non-practicing entity only went after companies that were large enough to get some meaty licensing revenue and they ignored all the small fry.

No patent owner that I can think of "doesn't want to make a licensing deal." In fact, it is a legal requirement that patent owners license their tech for a "reasonable fee", although that can mean many different things.

> Moderate funding of this risk would be sufficient. If you don't have this initial money but you're confident that you will find certain profit, maybe take a loan?

If he has no money now, why invest in patent advice? The patent owner likely won't sue him because you can not get blood from a stone.

Making a new company is a crap shoot. His success isn't assured at all. Why pay money now because of a remote possibility in the future? When instead he could just deal with that risk in the future?

Yeah, your points seem much more practical than mine.

I'd ignore it all, you are the underdog. I doubt that this will matter, and if people threaten you with something, you deal with the situation when it happens.

It's like when building a company. If you're going to worry about all possible regulations and doing everything perfect according to contracts and law, you're done. You'd rather focus on building relationships with people and building the business itself, doing just enough due dilligence.

Did you know you can continue and if they come after you if the future, which likely won't happen because you'd have to be successful first and they will have to be actively trying to enforce this patent and then notice you, and that combination by itself is hard enough to achieve, you can actually settle with them and they will likely price it in a way that you can actually afford to pay it.

The large majority of patent owners are in it to make money. They will sue a billion dollar company to get a large settlement a they will try to get a small settlement out of a small company but only if you are big enough it makes sense to go after you. They will try to make it affordable for that company, but it is a negotiation, and of course they will have a high opening big and then you can negotiate them down to something fair. A single license patent is affordable for any company assume the owner of the patent is in it for the money. For non-practicing money, they are just trying to get as many settlements for as much as they can from as many companies as possible. This means they focus on the big fish, and the medium fish where the juice is worth the squeeze.

Now I am not a lawyer, but I've been through this and have been a party to those negotiations. You'll likely be fine.

Also anyone creating software is likely in violation a whole raft of patents that you don't know about. The field is littered with overboard patents that you would not even think apply to you. We will likely be fine since most of those patents are not being enforced, because they are invalid, and also we will likely be fine if they are enforced because they will go after the big firms before they come after us.

I don't understand--is this a side project, or is it a thing you are trying to sell?

It is a thing I eventually plan on selling.

i havent encountered this in my life yet but how does this work? can people just ask for permission to use that approach? do they have to be paid in royalties? are they patenting processes (flexible) or procedures (specific, sequential)?

you hire a lawyer to make inquiries with the patent owner to obtain a license. Terms can be all sorts of different things. some patent owners won't give licenses to anybody.

I would ask why this individual is searching for patents he might be in violation of. In computer science there are likely a ton of overly board patents that may, if you squint your eyes, could be viewed as applying to your projects. Why would you do this to yourself? Do not go out and try to find potential violations and look to license them all - of course any patent owner will love to get unsolicited license fees, but you are basically engaging in an unnecessary make work project that will just hurt you.

If you are in a jurisdiction without software patents you could always ignore those and sell your game only in jurisdictions without software patents.

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