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."

Comments

This is a really stupid article.

[Anonymous Coward]

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Re:A little ridiculous

[suv4x4]

Next they'll patent "fun".

That would be ok, no other console producing company seems interested in this invention.