Gaikai sued for alleged streaming patent infringement

T5 Labs is suing Gaikai for infringing on its patent, which covers sharing a GPU between two or more programs.

8

Cloud gaming service Gaikai hasn't really made waves since it was bought by Sony in July. But now the company is facing a court battle with Delaware-based T5 Labs, which alleges that Gaikai infringed on its patent.

The complaint (via Gamasutra) claims that T5's patent for "Sharing a Graphical Processing Unit Between a Plurality of Programs" has been infringed upon by Gaikai's game streaming technology. The claim goes on to state that it sent Gaikai written notice of the infringement, and that the company continued to knowingly infringe afterwards. The company had previously considered legal action against OnLive for the same type of technology, but hasn't pursued a case.

Editor-In-Chief
Filed Under
From The Chatty
  • reply
    October 11, 2012 2:00 PM

    Steve Watts posted a new article, Gaikai sued for alleged streaming patent infringement.

    T5 Labs is suing Gaikai for infringing on its patent, which covers sharing a GPU between two or more programs.

    • reply
      October 11, 2012 2:48 PM

      Technically, isn't anything capable of running in a window running two or more programs on the GPU?
      I guess Windows and Apple have licensed this from T5 Labs already?

      • reply
        October 11, 2012 2:55 PM

        I read the patent, and it's more specifically talking about transmitting stuff from a pool of GPUs to a remote device.

        That said, the claims are written so broadly that they'd cover any remote use of GPUs to do graphics; it's ridiculous that you could claim this given people sell hardware specifically for it.

        I hate our patent system.

        • reply
          October 11, 2012 3:10 PM

          [deleted]

        • reply
          October 11, 2012 3:55 PM

          Yeah, it would cover a renderfarm.

          Hell, it would probably have been prior arted by B5 with their Amiga video toaster.

    • reply
      October 11, 2012 3:05 PM

      Patents here to save the day, once again!

    • reply
      October 11, 2012 3:48 PM

      Patents are overpowered. i hope soon a patch will nerf them

      • reply
        October 11, 2012 3:56 PM

        Laws should be written like patch notes.

        * Patents have been nerfed. Software is now unpatentable by legal paladins.
        * Taxes are going up by 2%. This fixes the issue where we had no money.

        • reply
          October 11, 2012 4:31 PM

          * Legal Pirateers may still utilize the "Increase Pretrial Documenting" skill, though its cooldown has been increased to 4 months.

          • reply
            October 12, 2012 5:13 AM

            Thx for the chuckles, guys. :)

    • reply
      October 11, 2012 4:05 PM

      The problem isn't the idea of having patents it's that the patent office approves these vague patents that could almost apply to anything.

      • reply
        October 12, 2012 5:20 AM

        When it comes to software, the problem is absolutely having patents in the first place. The rest is also a problem, sure, but that is an inherent problem that can't really be worked around.

      • reply
        October 12, 2012 5:27 AM

        Could you give an example of a good software patent? Perhaps mp3 compression? It's hard to think of a case where the patent has been for something that's a significant piece of work and where issuing the patent has had clear public benefits.

Hello, Meet Lola