politicsThis was originally something I was going to talk about in Corporations have Rejected Copyright, back when that series was going to just be one long post (really!). But since I saw Nintendo apparently sued Palworld today, I wanted to put this up as background information.
You should definitely read You’ve Never Seen Copyright first, particularly the explanation of what patents are, because this conversation directly follows from that. The most important thing to pick up on is how the Doctrine of Equivalents lets companies use patents that are supposedly very specific to threaten other implementations that are similar, even if they aren’t using the patented design.
Game patents are revelatory, because game rules as a category explicitly do not fall within the realm of patent rights, but companies have managed to file and defend fraudulent patents anyway.
Namco§
I’m obliged to start by talking about Namco’s patent for Recording medium, method of loading games program code means, and games machine, aka “The Loading Screen Game Patent”.
This patent gave Namco a monopoly over the idea of avoiding “unnecessary wastage of time” by having a “main game and an auxiliary game” from 1995-2015. Translated, that means playing a simple game while the console loads the main game. Like Squid Jump!
This incredibly simple concept went totally unused, locked under patent for two decades, and it violates everything a patent is meant for.
It doesn’t publicise any useful information or techniques for doing anything new, because nothing was invented. There was no trade, no exchange of inventive scientific information in exchange for patent protection. Namco hadn’t created anything, they were just making a land grab in the hopes of forcing other game companies to license the concept of minigames.
Not only can concepts not be patented in the first place, this wasn’t even a particularly inventive one! Playing a game while you wait for another game to load is an incidental improvement to the “loading screen” technology. This is clearly evidenced by the fact that Namco themselves made it as an incidental improvement. Their product isn’t an innovative new minigame system, that’s just something they made as part of making a good video game. They only filed the patent for it after the fact in order to claim as much monopoly power as they could.
Not only that, that patent was filed fraudulently in the first place, because the concept was one that had already been invented and Namco themselves copied!
Elliot Harmon, “The Loading Screen Game Patent Finally Expires” In 1998, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued Patent 5,718,632, on a method for avoiding “unnecessary wastage of time” in video games.
According to the law, a person isn’t entitled to a patent if the claimed invention already existed when the application was filed or would have been obvious to someone skilled in the relevant technology area. The idea of playing a small game while the larger one loads has been around for a very long time. In 1987, many years before Namco filed its patent application, Richard Aplin created Invade-a-Load, a utility for developers who wrote games for the Commodore 64 computer. As a game developer, you could package Invade-a-Load with your game; while players waited for the game, they’d be treated to a mini-game similar to Space Invaders. Given the breadth of Namco’s claims, there is a very strong case that its application should have been rejected as anticipated or obvious in light of Invade-a-Load.
Grab bag§
There’s more patents. There’s so many more patents.
There’s Game display method, moving direction indicating method, game apparatus and drive simulating apparatus. This is Sega’s patent for an arrow that points at where the goal is, otherwise known as “a compass”.
The patent itself mostly describes the incidental math required for rendering an arrow, and the if-else logic for picking a destination to point to. But the fact that they described the math they used doesn’t give them the right to claim ownership over the idea of an arrow from one place to another! And they used it to sue Fox for using an arrow in a Simpsons game!
Of course, they didn’t even invent that. Crash Bandicoot 3’s Coco levels had the same 3D arrow system. In a racing minigame, no less!
Sega also owns Video game with spiral loop graphics for… the corkscrew loops Sonic runs across in Green Hill Emerald Hill Zone. Not the loops, just the spirals!
Yes, just the graphics for displaying a corkscrew. Yes, all the sprite rendering techniques are prior art and incidental development. Yes, 3D graphics were old news too. Yes, the thing they’re depicting is just emulating the corkscrew loop of a rollercoaster. But if they could get a patent for it, that’s basically just free property for Sega, so of course they got it.
EA snagged Graphical interface for interactive dialog for the Bioware radial menu, which lets you pick an option from a circular menu using your circular analog stick. They shaped the menu like the controller so you can control it. It’s good, but it’s not theirs.
Microsoft sat on Scoring based upon goals achieved and subjective elements for the last twenty years without acting on it. That’s a good thing, because it claims ownership over the idea of… awarding bonus points.
joker gambled
Nemesis System§
But at least most of those have expired. (Squid jump is legal now.) There are lots that haven’t.
The canonical example of this is Warner Bros’ “Nemesis System”, something I’ve heard is neat, but I haven’t experienced because it’s locked behind a patent on a game I’m not interested in.
The Nemesis System is a system that generates dynamic “recurring enemy” NPCs in open-world games. The patent was rejected by the USPTO for six years of filing revisions before Warner Bros finally managed to slip a revision through. That’s the same patent system that granted a patent for “play a game while you” in the first shot, that’s how bad the Nemesis patent is.
Despite being a really good innovation, the Nemesis System has gone virtually untouched since it was tainted by patent. Warner Bros haven’t used it for anything else, no one has licensed it from them, and no studios are willing to risk using those same methods, for risk of a lawsuit. The patent has, demonstrably, completely destroyed a genuine innovation.
The patent, of course, doesn’t provide any useful information about the system. It doesn’t disclose anything, it doesn’t provide any value. All it does is shut down inventiveness, because it grants a monopoly on a system that, while creative, shouldn’t have been patent-eligible in the first place.
Feb 6, 2021 · 6:50 AM UTCI looked at the patent & it's so broad as to be absurd! multiple other emergent narrative systems that I have seen & worked on could be described with their language! It probably would not be legally enforceable but I & other indie devs don't have the money to find out!
Feb 6, 2021 · 6:52 AM UTCI have zero interest in copying the Nemesis system whole cloth! Personally there are a number of other things there I would do differently. But the patent is so broad that I'm still worried that it's a license to stop ANY similar work from being developed!
Speaking of haven’t-run-out patents, Sony managed to patent adaptive difficulty… last year.
Pokemon§
And the big concept Nintendo “owns”, the thing they’re insisting Palworld should have to license from them in order to use, seems to be… throwing little guys.
This isn’t even pretending to publicise an invention. It’s just a description of their game, so they can sue people they view as competition. It’s Nintendo-typical thuggery, and it’s the cherry on top of the whole pile of shit that is “game patents.”