Are Video Game Patents Next?

MarcOiL writes "Gamasutra is running an article titled It's Just a Game, Right? Top Mythconceptions on Patent Protection of Video Games where two IP lawyers try to convince the videogame industry of patenting everything in sight: ideas, technical contributions, etc. They show as an example a Microsoft patent on Scoring based upon goals achieved and subjective elements. They also have created a weblog, The Patent Arcade, to promote their business. Will this be the real end of innovation in videogames?"

Comments

D&D as Prior Art?

[ect5150]

I would imagine any D&D would be prior art in a general games category? MSoft wasn't exactly the first company to get into games. I'm not sure how they can get a pantent on how points are awarded. Any D&D DM has subjective power to award points, and MS didn't exactly put D&D out there.

Re:D&D as Prior Art?

[gowen]

I would imagine any D&D would be prior art in a general games category?

Then they'll just add the words "using a computer" to each of their claims.

Perhaps I'm missing something...

[agraupe]

But if there are patents on videogames, would it not stimulate the production of original games? If you couldn't make a game based on a certain set of ideas, wouldn't you be forced to create an original game?

Note: I don't agree with software or videogame patents, because I think they screw the consumer in the end by providing a crappy product, at likely a high price. But still, that last sentence made no sense.

Re:Perhaps I'm missing something...

[cowscows]

The problem is, patenting things like "ideas", and "gameplay" can get a little hazy. Add in the innate human brain's ability to detect similarities and patterns, and you'll be seeing infringement everywhere you look. Everything is built upon something else to some degree. And if they don't get you with a gameplay patent, they'll trip you up with some patented technical detail in your programming.

What if the guys who made marble madness had patented "Using an electronic input device to control a digital sphere through the visual representation of a three dimensional world"? I'm no patent lawyer, so I don't know how much sense that makes, but it reads about as basic and vague to me as most of the patent summaries I browse do.

By that measure, things like bowling games or Super Monkey Ball could be threatened. Is there a connection between Super Money Ball and marble madness? Yeah, on a really superficial level. Do the games play at all alike? Nope. Were the designers inspired by Marble Madness? Maybe. Did they ruthlessly steal expensively developed ideas from the Marble Madness developers? No.

Even Katamari Damacy could be argued to fall under a patent like that. And that's generally considered one of the most fun, original games of the past year.

I'm going to agree that any kind of software patents are going to be very harmful to the industry as a whole. And just shifting the current patent system to something like video games is going to pretty much be death to it.

The lawyer's argument is basically, getting patents is a way for the current players to make more money and cement their position on top of the biz. You can't seriously make the argument that, in this case, patents will spur on innovation, because there's been leaps and bounds of innovation in the relatively patent free video game universe since its inception.

Re:Aren't they already here?

[lisaparratt]

Surely there's oodles of prior art back on the old 8-bits?

I fondly remember invaderload on Alpha Centauri!

Parasites.

[John Carmack]

I'm proud that there is "a relative dearth of patent applications for the video game industry, especially considering how technology-dependent the video game industry is, and given its size in terms of annual sales."

Before issuing a condemnation, I try hard to think about it from their point of view -- the laws of the land set the rules of the game, and lawyers are deeply confused at why some of us aren't using all the tools that the game gives us.

Patents are usually discussed in the context of someone "stealing" an idea from the long suffering lone inventor that devoted his life to creating this one brilliant idea, blah blah blah.

But in the majority of cases in software, patents effect independent invention. Get a dozen sharp programmers together, give them all a hard problem to work on, and a bunch of them will come up with solutions that would probably be patentable, and be similar enough that the first programmer to file the patent could sue the others for patent infringement.

Why should society reward that? What benefit does it bring? It doesn't help bring more, better, or cheaper products to market. Those all come from competition, not arbitrary monopolies. The programmer that filed the patent didn't work any harder because a patent might be available, solving the problem was his job and he had to do it anyway. Getting a patent is uncorrelated to any positive attributes, and just serves to allow either money or wasted effort to be extorted from generally unsuspecting and innocent people or companies.

Yes, it is a legal tool that may help you against your competitors, but I'll have no part of it. Its basically mugging someone.

I could waste hours going on about this. I really need to just write a position paper some day that I can cut and paste when this topic comes up.

John Carmack