unforum

[janemcg]

Patenting ARG

[Phaedra]

[audioslave]

...If these SOBs acctually get a patient, I'd make an "cross-media story" just to spite them (yes, I'll get sued, I know)...

[taozero]

How would/could one find out the patent information (i.e. what exactly they are patenting) before the patent goes through?

[audioslave]

Ok, I just did a quick search and the closest hit was this:

But that dosn't seem really like what we're doing, also, Chris Tyler wasn't mentioned there. In fact, there is no entry for Chris Tyler at all in the database of submitted patents on the US database (not that I can see)

** Embedded URL to make width of post less wide. -- jamesi

[iworkhere]

heh

[matalanifesto]

1 word...
Boycott.

They want to take away our toys and i'm gonna spit the dummy.

And a question, why are argn giving them airtime, i know they like to demote all indie args to second class status with thier little diclaimer, but why help a company thats tring to take over the entire genre?

[C_Brennan]

Wow... if this wasn't so serious it would be funny. I'd like to see them try this patent to the genre when there's so much prior art, working companies in the genre, and an entire community dedicated to it.

I think they're about to get a rude wake up call, and I'd gladly support any push against this silly patent.

[Ciaran_H]

Eek. This isn't good.

One thing I've noticed about patents is that the USPTO seem to be quite liberal in what patents are accepted. From what I've seen in places, it's somewhat of a running joke that they'll just accept anything that they see and that it's up to other people to challenge it if it's false.

Of course, that's not quite true. But it does seem like it in some areas. Thanks for the heads-up, Jane.

[gazdemon]

I'm in for the battle.

[Dionysus]

I agree with boycotting their game whether or not they get the patent. They fact that they DARED to try and get patent makes them scum and unworhty of my time.

[SirQuady]

I think a boycott is defidently in order!

Thanks for the heads up Jane.

Now, i'm no lawyer (not by a long shot) but i think that if we can do ANYTHING to stop this, we should.

Any ideas on stopping this before it gets any further?

[catherwood]

I keep going back to re-read the press release, and that one sentence in particular. For some reason, when I first read about this, I thought it said that they were going to patent the technology specific to their game. I figured it would be similar to having 4orty2wo patent the software and hardware combination which drove the engine of ILoveBees, all that automated phone dialing and voice recognition and audio delivery mechanisms. If Riddle Productions has developed a unique platform which is "integral" to their delivery of this new game of theirs, I can understand their desire to protect that portion of it.

But no, I cannot find anything which supports my interpretation of their announcement. And yes, I doubt they could win a patent on the concept of multi-channel story-telling -- as long as the patent office is informed.

(edit -- came back later to add this paragraph) Oh, ok, now I see what i did, I mentally diagrammed the phrasing this way: "has filed the patent (for) applications integral to providing the series' cross-media method of storytelling". I see that it says that the patent applications are integral, not that they are patenting the (software) applications (which are) integral to their method. Big difference.
---

Onto another sentence in that same press release, I noticed this:

[rowan]

I thought the same thing. Found this on the Emmy website

[joebrent]

I know a little bit about the concept of "intellectual property", not so much about actual patent law, but if it works the same way, then you can do whatever you want so long as you don't actually profit from the venture. Not-for-profits get around copyright laws all the time this way. I dunno -- there's some lawyers around this place, maybe they should look into it. I'd imagine we're ok, though.