Good to hear, although the mere presence of a bullshit lawsuit can do a lot of damage to a smaller company.
The problem remains, however, that the patents in question were granted in the first place, as were the retroactive addenda (which is a terrible “feature” of Japanese patent law).
Game mechanics are patentable both in principle and in practice. And that’s a problem.
Well sure if you wanna take the angle that game mechanics being patentable is in and of itself a problem then… yeah, ok.
What is anybody gonna do about that?
Best case scenario I can possibly think of is… maybe if SKG remains an actual political entity and score some actual wins, maybe something like 5 years down the line they could draw up draft reforms for patent and copyright laws, but…
… even just assuming that you could come up with a new framework that people would actually well understand and also broadly support… not gonna be easy to balance the idea of a small upstart trying to secure a wedge of a market, vs a giant megacorp that owns all neat ideas…
…that would be an even more insane battle than going up against just video game companies.
At that point, you’d be taking on essentially all of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet.
People have been arguing for reforming the DMCA for decades, its never gone anywhere.
It is barely realistically concievable to me that anything could actually be done about this.
Good to hear, although the mere presence of a bullshit lawsuit can do a lot of damage to a smaller company.
The problem remains, however, that the patents in question were granted in the first place, as were the retroactive addenda (which is a terrible “feature” of Japanese patent law).
Game mechanics are patentable both in principle and in practice. And that’s a problem.
Well sure if you wanna take the angle that game mechanics being patentable is in and of itself a problem then… yeah, ok.
What is anybody gonna do about that?
Best case scenario I can possibly think of is… maybe if SKG remains an actual political entity and score some actual wins, maybe something like 5 years down the line they could draw up draft reforms for patent and copyright laws, but…
… even just assuming that you could come up with a new framework that people would actually well understand and also broadly support… not gonna be easy to balance the idea of a small upstart trying to secure a wedge of a market, vs a giant megacorp that owns all neat ideas…
…that would be an even more insane battle than going up against just video game companies.
At that point, you’d be taking on essentially all of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet.
People have been arguing for reforming the DMCA for decades, its never gone anywhere.
It is barely realistically concievable to me that anything could actually be done about this.