Sony Patents Matrix-Like Game Technology

howman writes "Reuters is reporting that Sony has been granted 2 patents, both describing 'Method and system for generating sensory data onto the human neural cortex'. These are patents 6,729,337 and 6,536,440. The patents go on to 'describe a technique for aiming ultrasonic pulses at specific areas of the brain to induce sensory experiences such as smells, sounds and images'. The story was first broken by New Scientist magazine." Commentary also available via Ars Technica.

Comments

Re:Paradise Engineering ...

[Cyn]

No, it was to give them a temporary monopoly since they (theoretically) spent all that time/money developing it - since it should not have been something that is plainly obvious from existing knowledge/technologies.

In fact, originally (in the US, from 1790) a model was required to demonstrate how it functioned, but that requirement was removed in 1870.

I would argue that maybe you don't have to actually build one, but you need to throw down a lot of proof that you know it could work, and if things don't work out that way then you haven't yet patented whatever you've just created, and you need to patent the proper method.