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Two Xbox Anti-Hacking Patents Published?
theodp writes "The USPTO published two interesting patent applications late last week, both apparently from Microsoft. Architecture for manufacturing authenticatable gaming systems is designed 'to prevent hackers from easily obtaining valid credentials for purposes of cheating or other improper uses'. This is done by placing pre-established secrets on game systems during console manufacturing. Network architecture for secure communications between two console-based gaming systems establishes links using secrets derived from authentic game consoles running authentic game titles." These were both originally filed back in late 2001, but is this just convoluted syntax for what the Xbox already does, or is anything interesting going on here?
I think there's a huge misconception on slashdot about what a patent is, exactly. You cannot patent a general concept. What you patent is a specific method of doing something. For example, there are several hundred patents issued for different types of can-openers. Obviously, the concept of opening a can has been around since cans were invented. But, not surprisingly the methods used to get at the contents of a can have been quite varied. In fact the thing we now recognize today as the canonical can-opener wasn't invented until 1925. Before then there were all kinds of crazy methods of opening cans that tended to spill stuff all over the place. For further reading on this subject I highly recommend The Evolution of Useful Things by Henry Petroski.
No. They will either have to find a different method than that patented (which shouldn't be too hard, the MS patent is fairly specific in its claims), or license the technology from MS.