I actually think you coukd get around this via using a polygon with an odd number of sides, and not use a moving ‘selection box’ to indicate the selected category, but instead, just overdraw/shadow/highlight/bold/animate/colorchange/font change the text.
Then, then all you have to do is not offer ‘classes’ (ie set categories that define a static dialogue tree) as the primary options.
So you could just make those ‘classes’ dynamic within themselves, a full web or mesh, not a tree of boxes, and then just offer ‘mesh entry points’, not ‘category descriptors’.
To me the most insane thing about this is that they appear to patenting not just the visual style of a dailogue wheel… but also the concept of a dialogue tree, combined with the visual elements.
Wow I am now very tempted to come up with the ‘dialogue nonagon’ or ‘dialogue septagon’.
Like… are you kidding me?
At what point, how many n’s does the polygon need before it legally becomes a circle?
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070226648A1/en
I actually think you coukd get around this via using a polygon with an odd number of sides, and not use a moving ‘selection box’ to indicate the selected category, but instead, just overdraw/shadow/highlight/bold/animate/colorchange/font change the text.
Then, then all you have to do is not offer ‘classes’ (ie set categories that define a static dialogue tree) as the primary options.
So you could just make those ‘classes’ dynamic within themselves, a full web or mesh, not a tree of boxes, and then just offer ‘mesh entry points’, not ‘category descriptors’.
To me the most insane thing about this is that they appear to patenting not just the visual style of a dailogue wheel… but also the concept of a dialogue tree, combined with the visual elements.