I've been working on a scene partitioning scheme in my spare time and after flushing out the details, I noticed that my idea has already been patented. I was wondering what sort of road blocks would I run into if I implement my idea? I wrote about the details in my blog. Here is a link to the patent. Although being very similar ideas, would implementing the algorithm (without looking at the patent) be safe? Suggestions are welcome.

Off topic: This is why I really really hate software patents...

EDIT: To clarify; I mean that it's easy to "discover" something and patent it, even though it's not unique in any way. It's not helped by the fact that the people who approve software patents have no idea about what they're patenting. I'm tempted to try to patent the for() loop...

[Edited by - Evil Steve on March 26, 2009 11:11:51 AM]

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Original post by Evil Steve Off topic: This is why I really really hate software patents...

I totally Agree.

I guess you're lucky it's Intel and not a patent troll company.

If you do it a bit differently, you should be ok. It's not like they could have patented the octree, so as long as it's not an exact copy, my thoughts is you should be fine.

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Original post by Evil Steve Off topic: This is why I really really hate software patents... EDIT: To clarify; I mean that it's easy to "discover" something and patent it, even though it's not unique in any way. It's not helped by the fact that the people who approve software patents have no idea about what they're patenting. I'm tempted to try to patent the for() loop...

lol. Be careful. I already patented "i++". [wink]

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Original post by K1nG Gr4H4m I guess you're lucky it's Intel and not a patent troll company. If you do it a bit differently, you should be ok. It's not like they could have patented the octree, so as long as it's not an exact copy, my thoughts is you should be fine.

I was thinking along the same lines. Intel doesn't really go after people violating their minor patents like this. That is, if they bother going out and looking for my source code. I'm surprised that it got patented in the first place since it is basically an Octree.

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lol. Be careful. I already patented "i++". [wink]

Not to be confused with my patent of "++i".

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Original post by Evil Steve Off topic: This is why I really really hate software patents...

This.

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Original post by RealMarkP I'm surprised that it got patented in the first place since it is basically an Octree.

That's the exact same thing I thought. I only took a quick glance but it looked a lot like a normal octree to me =/

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Original post by RealMarkP Quote: lol. Be careful. I already patented "i++". [wink] Not to be confused with my patent of "++i".

I patented i += 1 by the way. Don't think in doing that either.

> I'm surprised that it got patented in the first place
> since it is basically an Octree.

It's a regular grid front-end and each cube contains an octree. If you have a pure octree from the first node down, then it's a Glassner algo. If you have a pure regular grid, then it's a 3DDA algo. The patent is an hybrid of the two.

-cb

Software patents utterly slaughter innovation. Moving back on topic, I suppose it depends on how Intel enforces the patent and what they do with it.

Finishing off topic, the three of you violated my patent on i. Pay up =)