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Nintendo Awarded Patent for Instant Messaging
Zwzo writes "Nintendo has been awarded a patent for a video game messaging service that utilizes a buddy list and can display information about game activities and user status." From the article: "Initially filed in 2000, a year before the release of Microsoft's Xbox and two years before the official launch of Microsoft's Xbox Live Internet service, Nintendo's patent is relatively broad and could potentially lead to litigation against other major players in the game console market. Although the text of the patent itself refers to the Nintendo64 and Game Boy Color by name, some have speculated that this patent could portend an instant messaging system for the Wii."
It just goes to show how ridiculous some patents can be. Companies like Valve have used instant messenger in their games (Steam --> Friends) for some time now. Now I can see protecting innovation, that is perfectly respectable, but patenting something that has been around for ages now just shouldn't be allowed! Next they'll patent "fun".
If Nintendo does try to use it against Microsoft though, it'll just be a case of Microsoft getting a dose of their own medicine. They've been trying stuff like this for years.
- Nintendo does not have a patent on instant messaging. Nintendo has a patent on an instant messaging product. Some or all other instant messaging and/or game instant messaging products will not infringe on Nintendo's patent.
- Nintendo patents pretty much everything they do, every platform product they develop-- even if, as with the N64. This doesn't mean they intend to use the patent. It just means they wanted a patent. Nintendo owns patents on gobs and gobs of different things, but to my knowledge they've never used one against a competing video game system, ever. Nintendo patents stuff because they just don't want someone in thailand to make an N64 clone using Nintendo's circuit boards or whatever.
- The patent is from 2000. If this patent were anything but paperwork to Nintendo, they could have done something with it by now. The people at Nintendo probably barely even remember filing it. This patent tells us what some people inside Nintendo were thinking around 2000. It's interesting because it tells us that a few years ago, when Nintendo looked at XBox Live and said consumers didn't want it, Nintendo wasn't just posturing because they were annoyed Microsoft had thought of it first-- they'd actually thought out an online service and then decided the market wasn't ready for it yet. But besides Nintendo's circa-2000 mindset, the granting of this patent doesn't tell us anything else.
This article is stupid, and you're stupid if you took it seriously."OR" is not "XOR".
In common English usage, it is.
What would be the point of patenting _anything_ if it didn't put you ahead of your competitors in some way?
Defensive patents, preventing competitors from patenting it. They also allow a MAD policy for patents, "sue me and I'll sue you".
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
A better analogy might be this: You find out that the hungarian army has weapons.
Holy crud! The Hungarian army has weapons? They could use those weapons to kill us!
Except wait, a couple of questions immediately come to mind.
- Wait, what kind of weapons? Are they guns? Pitchforks? Atom bombs? Stun tasers? Are these even the kind of weapons that you could kill somebody with?
- Wait, why is this a surprise? Wouldn't one assume the Hungarian army has weapons? I mean, having weapons is kind of something that armies tend to do.
- Why exactly do we think the Hungarian army is going to do anything with these weapons? Has Hungary even done anything in the last 50 years? Don't they just kind of sit around and like... I don't know, drink beer or whatever it is Hungarians do?
Now, there are circumstances where finding out about somebody having weapons might be worrisome, depending on who they were and what kind of weapons they were. Like, if it was your neighbor, and he had a bomb, that would be awfully worrisome-- because bombs are uncommon in residential areas, there's no valid reason why your neighbor might have a bomb, and you have no particular reason to expect your neighbor would randomly stockpile bombs but never use them. And if was Iran, and they had a nuclear weapon, then that would be a good reason to be downright alarmed.But the Hungarian army having stun tazers? Wait, why is this supposed to be interesting again? Similarly, why should it make a difference that Nintendo (a company with no history of patent abuse or even patent enforcement really) obtained a specific patent on a specific instant messaging system that they designed for a product six years ago and then never sold?
The Hungarian army stockpiles weapons but never does anything with them. Nintendo stockpiles patents but never does anything with them. The world is a dangerous place but we survive anyway. Deal.