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Patent Markings May Spell Trouble For Activision
eldavojohn writes "If you pick up your copy of Guitar Hero and read the literature, you'll notice it says 'patent pending' and cites a number of patents. A group alleges no such patent pends nor are some of the patents applicable. If a judge finds Activision guilty of misleading the public in this manner, they could become liable for up to $500 per product sold under false patent marking. The patents in question seem to be legitimately Guitar Hero-oriented, and little is to be found about the mysterious group. The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers."
Guess someone in the patents-cubicle zoned out and forgot to follow up on his email properly..
"Oh those patents, yes, they're sent off..." "What are those patentnumbers, we need them for printing.." *searches inbox on 'patent issue'* "Here's a list, let me put it in excel for you.." "kthx!!"
I have no expertise even remotely in this area but, as the submitter, I looked up all the patents mentioned in the claim. A lot of them seem to do with specifics about the controllers like the drum set, guitar or even the mixing board for DJ Hero. But basically each seems to cover many aspects of how these input systems allow the user to 'learn' and how the played track is replayed over the recorded audio. Take 5739457 for instance, it seems to focus entirely on the electronic drum sets of Guitar Hero. I think what happened here was that the patent markings were put on every single dust jacket for several Guitar Hero products -- regardless of whether or not they came with the hardware to play the game. So you go pick up your stand alone disc of Guitar Hero and there's no plastic drum with it because you bought just the disc or maybe the guitar-only distribution. That was about as far as I could see them going with these claims. That the person buying that may be confused that the product they bought is covering patents that promise something grander than what they bought.
A really interesting implication for anyone that makes hardware. What if all XBox packs had the same generic patent markings and the arcade came with patent markings for the headset and wireless attachment (not included in arcade)?
Should this sort of thing be prosecutable? Should Acitivision really get any sort of judgment against them for this level of carelessness?
My work here is dung.
... numbers from Patent Hero, the newest game from Activision - you play along with the patent process but aren't really applying for them?
You hold the pen. You fill out the forms. You are the Patent Hero!
As the article notes, these have become common lately. Groups going under names like the one here, "Patent Compliance Group", spend their time digging through product literature looking for "patent pending" claims, and then dig to see if a patent really is pending. In some small percentage of cases, it isn't, and they hope to make enough money on those to justify the endeavor.
I mean, I don't like false advertising, but somehow this particular cure seems even worse than the relatively minor disease of a game claiming it has a patent pending when it doesn't. Given that anyone can file a patent for pretty much anything, it's not like "patent pending" is worth much as a claim anyway.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
The final piece of the puzzle puts the filing in Texas Northern District Court, which might be close enough to Texas Eastern District Court to write this off as a new kind of 'false patent marking troll' targeting big fish with deep coffers.
Troll? Hardly. The Electronic Frontier Foundation routinely files lawsuits like this one on the public's behalf. Compare PCG's lawsuit against alleged patent fraud to EFF's investigations and other actions against alleged copyfraud. So what's the big difference between a "false patent marking troll" and EFF?
If hardware is required to have related patents listed on the product, shouldn't software need these markings? What a mess that would spell.
Until Unisys's LZW patent expired, every major non-free paint program had "Licensed under U.S. Patent 4,558,302 and foreign counterparts" in its about box.
Um, no, patent pending is the opposite of stifling creativity.
Patents stifle creativity. Patent pending lets you know what patents to look up.
Society needs to be warned about pending patents, so that people won't waste their time developing something identical, and then learn it is patented. That is much most stifling of creativity than 'Here is a list of things you should look up before developing a product like this'.
You can argue that patents are bad, but you cannot possibly argue that 'knowing patents exist before spending time and money developing a product' is bad.
I'm actually amazed it's any sort of crime, and it certainly shouldn't be per instances. It's the equivalent of printing 'may contain peanuts' on food that does not, in fact, contain peanuts.
I mean, an argument can be made that an overkill 'patent pending' use can result in the person being unable to find the actual relevant patent by throwing too much chaff in there, but these patents are relevant...if you're using the software you purchased, you're using the patents. You're just using them on the hardware you bought separately. The government should just order them to correct the error.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?