Perhaps some of our Second Life friends may not who they say they are…  But then you knew that already….   ;)  I wonder if Dalien or Tiessa could whip me up a Vint clone, it could off load some of her IM responses.

-Veyron

Well seems like someone in Second Life is up to shenanigans over supposed patents of a fairly neat tool Dalien came up with and gives away. I believe this avatar, Jerry Martin, is full of smoke. It costs a non trivial amount of money to file a patent, and you need to do a patent search to search. To get it done right, you usually need a patent lawyer. As of 2005 the US Patent and Trademark Office was about 4 years behind in examining patent applications.

If Mr. Martin actually applied for a patent, and IF there is no prior art the USPTO has found, and IF there is no challenge to the patent, he might have a valid patent by 2011? Which by then should be worth about $2.53 - US.

Depending on how the patent is submitted is might even be easy to circumvent the patent by making a minor change to the algorithm used in the process.

-Veyron