Gameplay patents are bullshit.
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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All ~~Gameplay~~ patents are bullshit. Artificial barriers to entry that only restrict market forces in favor of screwing end consumers.
there can be a very good case made for putting private innovation into the public realm after a period of legal protections, (typically 20 years for most places)
but anything that is public by it's very nature should never be subject to patents
Even for those 20 years it can be incredibly suffocating in fast moving industries like IT. Just look at e.g. the way video codecs got mutilated by patents.
I think 3d printers would be the best example.
patents where invented to protect trade secrets with the result of making them public being an unavoidable consequence. I didn't mean to make it sound like I agree with intellectual property of any kind just to say there are good reasons and good outcomes. The internet doesn't tend to be the place to discuss nuance however.
I think the 20 years are just a bad "one size fits all" value, maybe lawmakers could be convinced to tie it to something like the typical product support lifecycle in the relevant industry. That would give companies that do want long patent protections an incentive to support their products for a longer time, benefiting the end user either way.
Woah who dug up Thomas Edison?
And also not legal
This shit is somewhat agreeable now, because Pal World is so similar, but once this door is opened, it's never going to let developers have the freedom to invent and innovate, because crusty old bullies want to use the legal system to punish anyone that dares resemble 2-3 decade old game mechanics.
Should platformer games pay royalties to Nintendo for having the first character to jump twice it's height?
Video game companies rent seeking for "game mechanics patents" on old shit is just ironically anti fun.
I don't think that you can patent game mechanics in the US, have read about that before, but it sounds like this lawsuit is in Japan, and their IP system may not work the same way.
EDIT: Sorry, I'm wrong. It's that game rules aren't covered by copyright, that's what I was remembering.
It's also creating a patent minefield that stifles any game development by people who can't afford the lawyers necessary to navigate it.
That's kinda what I meant, and its something I'm rather worried about.
The more bullshit patents we have the closer we get to patents being abolished I suppose
Damn it Nintendo, you opened the floodgates
Fuck this
¥ 1 billion equals:
- us$ 6.6 million
- € 6.1 million
- au$ 10 million
- £ 5.1 million
Fuck then both for having lootbox nonsense mobile games. Predatory gambling for digital bullshit.
Abolish software patents.
And what part of the game is infringing a patent?
Sega alleges infringements of the following five patents: No. 5930111, No. 6402953, No. 6891987, No. 7297361 and No. 7411307, all of which are registered in Japan.
I tried checking out that first patent there, 5930111 and who boy... is this shit hard to read
An information processing device includes: a control means for causing the player to acquire a content in response to a game execution instruction from the player; an extraction means for extracting content groups of the same type from contents possessed by the player, according to an instruction from the player; a selection means for automatically selecting fusion source contents and resource contents from each of the extracted content groups; and a fusion means for collectively fusing, for each of the fusion source contents, one of the resource contents of the same type as the each of the fusion source contents. The selection means selects, as the resource contents, contents having a rarity at or below a specific level, from each of the extracted content groups.
Okay this might fit
Fuck off.... that could literally mean anything.... I've read Trump quotes that were more intelligible than that....
How is anyone supposed to proof their work from not only this, but every single other bullshit patent out there?
What the actual fuck
Okay what the hell did I just read?
From my very very rough and cursory glance though: wouldn't this also likely be infringed by games such as Genshin Impact for their Auto "fuse" (aka enhancement) selection mechanic or does this patent have some more nuanced/specific thing which everyone else did not implement to skirt around it?
After attempting to read through it, seems like a menu to fuse or combine game objects which contain some form of sorting system as dictated by the player.. So I'm going to assume they mean their phantasy star online 2 ~~weapon~~ item fusion system.
It's such a rough definition that this can only be classified as a patent troll case. Not that they care about hiding that fact.
They all infringe my patent on having fun now give me all the games for free and your companies or ill sue you!
A couple years ago Sega noticed they could make more money if they copied Nintendo's homework with regard to legal strategy, and the world is the worse for it