Sony has published a patent that talks of amending in-game difficulty levels in real time as a player perhaps struggles or succeeds with certain elements
It’s worse with this particular case because the patent is for cross-gaming. You suck at competitive Street Fighter? The next turn-based JRPG difficulty goes down.
Trying to find ways to make something patentable that otherwise wouldn’t be.
They don’t actually have to implement the cross-game side of things because they got a patent that covers “same or different game”, and they can now carefully patent-bully over an unpatentable feature because nobody can afford to fight Sony in a lawsuit.
Edit: And I say carefully, because I cannot imagine a lawsuit about that patent being successful if properly defended unless the app in question builds the exact same behavior, which nobody is going to do because it’s stupid.
Gotta love patent law. I work at a company who got a (defensibly valid IMO) patent recently. There was so much silly red tape and complication that our final patent looked unpatentable to an outside observer like myself, but was approved by the Patent Office. Unlike the original feature that was far more straightforward and innovative, but that the Patent Reviewer didn’t really like because he thought some random unrelated product was “prior art”.
And if I recall, that “prior art” was something very much like “list of student names in a database with various metadata like phone number or email address, rendered on a webpage”. My first reaction to their objection was “wait, that is absolutely unpatentable…right?”
It’s worse with this particular case because the patent is for cross-gaming. You suck at competitive Street Fighter? The next turn-based JRPG difficulty goes down.
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Trying to find ways to make something patentable that otherwise wouldn’t be.
They don’t actually have to implement the cross-game side of things because they got a patent that covers “same or different game”, and they can now carefully patent-bully over an unpatentable feature because nobody can afford to fight Sony in a lawsuit.
Edit: And I say carefully, because I cannot imagine a lawsuit about that patent being successful if properly defended unless the app in question builds the exact same behavior, which nobody is going to do because it’s stupid.
Gotta love patent law. I work at a company who got a (defensibly valid IMO) patent recently. There was so much silly red tape and complication that our final patent looked unpatentable to an outside observer like myself, but was approved by the Patent Office. Unlike the original feature that was far more straightforward and innovative, but that the Patent Reviewer didn’t really like because he thought some random unrelated product was “prior art”.
deleted by creator
And if I recall, that “prior art” was something very much like “list of student names in a database with various metadata like phone number or email address, rendered on a webpage”. My first reaction to their objection was “wait, that is absolutely unpatentable…right?”