Is Zynga Trying To Patent Virtual Currency?

Posted by timothy on Saturday October 23, 2010 @02:41AM from the start-with-virtual-cowry-shells dept.

sarysa writes "Techcrunch spotted a recent patent application by Zynga, attempting to patent virtual currency purchased with real money for use in a gambling context. It is unlikely that the application will pass due to a plethora of prior art where free MMOs that have gambling minigames would qualify, but Techcrunch also spotted that the application mentions Farmville as an example of embodiment. This indicates that Zynga may be attempting to patent non-refundable virtual currency as a whole. Should be interestering to see how this develops."

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Virtual money by El_Muerte_TDS · 2010-10-23 03:30 · Score: 0, Offtopic

I've been using virtual money ever since I was able to pay for this directly from my back account without the need to convert it to real money first. Of course instead of using a new name and symbol thingy my bank simply used the same name and symbol as the real money, and applied a 1:1 conversion ratio.
Re:This patent should fail on two counts by MightyMartian · 2010-10-23 06:03 · Score: 0, Offtopic

Not only that, but isn't that basically what fiat currency is?

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