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[mikejkelley]

I hesitate posting this. I fully realize that Apple and Google have long since bought the nation's group-think-consensus on the issue. And for some reason patent posts and articles are particularly strong troll bait. But w/ the EFF (usually a big fan) trying to nix software patents all together, it's too important an issue to remain silent on.

BTW, if anyone here wants to protect their game ideas from the Zyngas of the world and wants to write their own patent, I might be able to point you in the right direction.

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An Open Letter to the EFF: A Game Developer in Defense of Patents

I am a software developer in the unforgiving, cut-throat realm of indie
game creation. The business model of one of my biggest competitors, Zynga,
is "copy what they (other studios) do until you get their numbers." Their
unofficial motto? "Do evil." Zynga practices what they preach, something
many small developers such as NimbleBit can testify to.

Recently Zynga's Hong Kong counterpart 6waves conned unsuspecting
developers Spry Fox to divulge trade secrets with broken promises of
multi-million dollar funding.
http://iqu.com/blog/clone-wars-spry-fox-versus-6waves-lolapps
Contracts were not enough to protect Spry Fox's hard work, the damage is
done.

I was in talks with 6waves to publish one of my titles around the same
time as this. The only reason I have not suffered a fate similar to that
of Spry Fox is that I have a software and business methods patent. Unable
to afford an attorney, I wrote it myself. The patent is currently my best
hope for financial success. It is the only thing that allows me, a 99
percenter, equal footing with mega-corporations such as Zynga and 6waves.

The recent spate of "patent troll" scare propaganda is the result of a
very careful, very insidious, and very effective campaign by
mega-corporations Google and Apple to make the public more receptive to
recent patent law rewrites. Rewrites authored by mega-corporations Google
and Apple.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/09/20/new-patent-law-means-trouble-for-tech-entrepreneurs/

Patents do not stifle innovation. They encourage innovation by providing
inventors financial incentive and a means to capitalize on their ideas.
Patents build nations and are a leading index of a nation's strength. At
one time patent holders such as Edison were revered. Tellingly, they are
now reviled as "trolls." Likewise "defendinnovation.org" is a misnomer on
par with "The Patriot Act." Patents remain the best hope for small
business men, women, and inventors to achieve the ever-more elusive
American dream.

Patents are the intellectual's debut number one single. They are the
thinking man's breakout film, the inventor's shot at "overnight" success.

My patent is my only hope.

Sincerely,
Michael Kelley

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Hi I'm not very knowledgeable on this subject so forgive my ignorance if it's showing.

Zynga already has a mandate to take existing successful games and make their own version. This is with patent law in effect. So is the issue that if patent law doesn't exist they can go a step further and take your exact character designs and art?

I guess my point is that they already kind of steal ideas. If the law changes how does this change for Zynga?

[moi]

software patents can suck my ass

[mikejkelley]

I guess my point is that they already kind of steal ideas. If the law changes how does this change for Zynga?

Copyright protects things like art, character, and story. It doesn't protect game mechanics. That's why Zynga is able to rip-off Tiny Tower by simply swapping out the pixel art with Flashish graphics. 6waves ripped off Spry Fox by swapping out Yetis with Sasquatches.

Certain game mechanics and technologies, however, can be patented. Would NimbleBit or Spry Fox have been able to patent anything? I can't say. I can say though that without patents, nothing will protect you from being ripped-off.

software patents can suck my ass

Any opinion that invites degrading sex acts is obviously well informed and adds to a thoughtful discourse, you're certainly not trolling. But I'd like to suggest that what you really mean is "my misconception of software patents can suck my ass." If, without googling it, you can't enumerate the legal standards for software patentability then you don't know what a software patent is.

[_Madk]

software patents can suck moi's ass

[C.D Buckmaster]

All software patents will do is give more power to the companies with the largest legal teams.

Think about all of the indie games out there that could considered clones of well established titles, if those games were patented, couldn't all of those indie games be considered patent infringement?

Things are less than ideal now, but I see no good coming out of software patents.

[Evan Balster]

I've always preferred trade secrets, myself.  Keep mum and if someone else independently has the same idea it probably wasn't a very good one in the first place.

[mikejkelley]

All software patents will do is give more power to the companies with the largest legal teams.

Why's that? Except for the claims, I created my provisional w/ a team of 1.

Think about all of the indie games out there that could considered clones of well established titles, if those games were patented, couldn't all of those indie games be considered patent infringement?

Things are less than ideal now, but I see no good coming out of software patents.

You rly need to inform your opinion by researching what defines a patent.

[VDZ]

As InfiniteStateMachine pointed out, companies are already plagiarizing games even with the patent system in place.

The biggest problem with software patents, as C.D Buckmaster pointed out, is that the entity with the most money is always right. So what if you've patented your game? Even discounting the fact that the patent can be sidestepped very easily by changing a trivial detail, your patent means NOTHING if you can't defend it. You see, when someone infringes on your patent and you object to it, first you send a notice telling him to stop, which is all fine and dandy and can be done by anyone.

The problem occurs when the reply isn't "okay, we'll stop since you're asking so nicely" but rather "fuck you, make us". At that point, they're free to continue doing what they were doing unless you drag them to court. And as can be seen from other patent cases, this process is generally lengthy and, more importantly, very costly. As a poor indie dev you can't shoulder the legal fees associated with suing a big company for patent infringement, and only entities with a lot of money (companies or rich people) can defend their patents. It gets worse, though: the more restrictive patents are allowed to be, the easier it is to sue over a patent. Just like a poor indie dev can't afford to sue for patent infringement, a poor indie dev also can't afford to BE SUED for patent infringement. Even if you're legally in the clear, as long as it's enough of a gray area you can be sued, and as a poor indie dev you'll have to go with the "we'll stop since you're asking so nicely" option as you don't have the money to choose the other option.

As for Thomas Edison, it's funny you hold him up as an example of legit patent usage. The guy got patents for tons and tons of inventions others made (often, but not always hired by Edison; but often enough he basically took an existing idea, made a minor change and patented it), bought a lot of patents from others, and was generally known for abusing the system for his commercial interest. Especially Nikola Tesla, one of the most groundbreaking inventors in history, was screwed over repeatedly by Edison, and despite his amazing inventions (many of which are still of vital importance to us to this day) he died poor and with debts. Seriously, fuck Edison.

[Paul Eres]

i agree with this post in part. i think it's wrong to think that corporations are in favor of copyright and patent law completely. corporations would like nothing more than to not have to pay authors, musicians, etc., anything, while selling their works for a profit. if copyright and patent law were completely abolished, nobody would benefit more than corporations. tired of paying stephen king that 40% royalty? they wouldn't have to; they could just get his books in stores and not pay him a dime. valve (with steam) tired of paying an indie a 60% royalty for their game? they wouldn't have to: just sell someone's game and keep 100% of the money, no need to give them anything. music company tired of giving the families of the beatles the measley 10-15% of sales that they get? now those families have to be happy with 0%

that said i think the problem of zynga ripping everyone off isn't something that can be fixed through law; i think an informed populace, documentaries exposing zynga, a boycott, etc., would go a lot further. there was a good investigative journalistic article on zynga that was making the rounds a year ago or so; we need more things like that to expose them. most of the people who give zynga money probably would not do so if they knew more about zynga. companies who do evil can be held to be accountable to public opinion if journalists merely did their jobs (most of them don't do that though)

realistically though zynga isn't any worse than most huge game corporations; EA, sony, microsoft, activision-blizzard, and many others, have all done similar things as zynga has. not one of them hasn't ripped some game off. the reason people focus in on zynga is that nobody likes their games except facebook moms, so they're an easy target for gamers. but if you were to go after an *actual* game company for doing the exact same things or having destructive business practices (e.g. valve) gamers routinely jump to their defense, when in reality beloved companies like valve have arguably done far more "evil" to the game industry than zynga could ever do

[mikejkelley]

As InfiniteStateMachine pointed out, companies are already plagiarizing games even with the patent system in place.

This is as ridiculous as complaining that even though we have vaccines, ppl are still dying of polio. You still have to get vaccinated, likewise you still have to file a patent.

So what if you've patented your game?

You can't patent a game per se.

Even discounting the fact that the patent can be sidestepped very easily by changing a trivial detail,

That's not a fact, that's a gross misconception.

unless you drag them to court.

Yep, prosecution is expensive. But if your patent is valuable enough, you can raise the money. If it's not valuable enough, don't bother patenting. Here's a personal anecdote. One of the people I know at the incubator, a public teacher's son, went into the telecommunications industry and developed a patent and related product. He sold the company, whose value was in no small way a function of the value of the patent, to Intel for several many millions of dollars. Patent prosecution costs? Well worth it.

As for Thomas Edison

As for Thomas Edison, we've all seen the info graphic. There's no discounting the fact that w/out Edison we'd have been a lot longer w/out consumable electricity.

i think it's wrong to think that corporations are in favor of copyright and patent law completely.

Corporations aren't (completely) in favor of patent law, but they are in favor of re-writing them to suit their interests as Google, Apple, and pharm manufacturers have done recently (eg the AIA).

i think an informed populace

I wish, but after reading some of these posts I'm not gonna hold my breath.

valve have arguably done far more "evil" to the game industry

I think Valve is one of the worst game companies going but that doesn't make Zynga any better bcs of it.

[Paul Eres]

ya but it's important to keep in mind that people are uninformed because game journalism is largely under the paw of the corporations, not because gamers are intentionally negligent. so i think solving the primary problem of journalists bowing to corporations by informing people / creating an alternative gaming media is more approachable and achievable than trying to fight the big corporations directly

and yes of course it doesn't make zynga better, i was just pointing out that zynga is hardly alone in having a habit of copying people's games almost directly and then not giving the games they copied any credit or profit. atari used to be particularly notorious for this in the old days (of their arcade machines and the atari 2600) so it has a long history

[VDZ]

i agree with this post in part. i think it's wrong to think that corporations are in favor of copyright and patent law completely. corporations would like nothing more than to not have to pay authors, musicians, etc., anything, while selling their works for a profit. if copyright and patent law were completely abolished, nobody would benefit more than corporations. tired of paying stephen king that 40% royalty? they wouldn't have to; they could just get his books in stores and not pay him a dime. valve (with steam) tired of paying an indie a 60% royalty for their game? they wouldn't have to: just sell someone's game and keep 100% of the money, no need to give them anything. music company tired of giving the families of the beatles the measley 10-15% of sales that they get? now those families have to be happy with 0%

Please don't group patents and copyright together as an inseparable whole. Patent gives exclusive rights to an idea (say, the concept of a game). Copyright gives exclusive rights to a specific execution of an idea (say, the game itself). Without patents but with copyright, companies are free to steal your game concept, but they still cannot steal your game. They'd have to clone it in order to do anything with your idea. They would still have to pay royalties when selling products unless they make their own versions of it.

but if you were to go after an *actual* game company for doing the exact same things or having destructive business practices (e.g. valve) gamers routinely jump to their defense, when in reality beloved companies like valve have arguably done far more "evil" to the game industry than zynga could ever do

Interesting. Care to elaborate on Valve's 'destructive business practices'?

As InfiniteStateMachine pointed out, companies are already plagiarizing games even with the patent system in place.

This is as ridiculous as complaining that even though we have vaccines, ppl are still dying of polio. You still have to get vaccinated, likewise you still have to file a patent.

Polio has been all but eradicated in places where vaccines are easily available. However, even in countries where patents are completely commonplace, plagiarism remains rampant and hugely profitable. The analogy would be fitting if polio vaccines were snake oil, but they actually work properly to prevent polio. Patents do not work to prevent plagiarism. They discourage it, yes, but only when backed with money.

So what if you've patented your game?

You can't patent a game per se.

I hope you're not being pedantic here, but just to clear it up in case you are: By 'patenting a game' I mean patenting a game's design (its rules and whatnot). They are very clearly patentable, even if it is difficult to do so. For example, the specific base rules of 'Magic: the Gathering' are patented.

Even discounting the fact that the patent can be sidestepped very easily by changing a trivial detail,

That's not a fact, that's a gross misconception.

Oh, but they can be. Just look at the tons of TCGs, some of which are almost direct MTG clones. Wizards of the Coast only managed to successfully sue one other TCG for this (Havic: the Bothering, which was a very direct parody).

unless you drag them to court.

Yep, prosecution is expensive. But if your patent is valuable enough, you can raise the money. If it's not valuable enough, don't bother patenting. Here's a personal anecdote. One of the people I know at the incubator, a public teacher's son, went into the telecommunications industry and developed a patent and related product. He sold the company, whose value was in no small way a function of the value of the patent, to Intel for several many millions of dollars. Patent prosecution costs? Well worth it.

You're making two assumptions here.

1) The original creator has enough starting capital to sue in the first place. It's not only a matter of 'is it worth the money', but also simply 'does he even HAVE the money even if it's worth it'? If we're talking about poor indie devs, the latter is unlikely unless he's already found some measure of success.

2) The patent in itself is worth a lot of money. Considering we were talking about the context of games, unless it's a restrictive patent that will limit the creative options in other games (like, having a patent on showing the pistol in front of you from a first-person perspective), it's unlikely to have much direct monetary value even if the rip-off is successful. After all, it's not the IDEA that was successful, it was the RESULTING PRODUCT, to which you have no rights whatsoever, that was successful. Good luck suing for damage claims like that. The only way you can get a significant amount of money out of something like that if the company making the rip-off product decides to just buy your little company. In which case, yes, you do finally get money for it, but you also lose the rights to any of your company's ideas. It may just be a personal opinion, but I don't think that's how patents are supposed to work.

[Paul Eres]

@vdz - there are already a bunch of other threads on valve where we've discussed them on this forum. here are a few links to get you started:

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22231.0 - "gabe's hypocrisy"

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=17993.0 - this one's on desura but it also has some steam discussion, especially on page 2

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=22488.0 - this thread was on an indie bundle, but also has a lot of steam discussion

http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=19886.0 - this one is on EA's steam alternative vs steam

but if you want the bullet point version, for me steam's problems boil down to:

- being hard to get on (rejecting indies without any reason given, not replying to submission emails, feeling random since often good games are rejected while bad games get on steam, being more about networking / who you know rather than how good your game is)

- being somewhat of a monopoly (a lot of gamers won't buy a game unless it's on steam, and most non-casual sales of games go through steam. the difference between an indie being successful or not often boils down to getting on steam or not)

- having extremely aggressive sales and thereby driving down the value of pc downloadable games (indie games used to be 20$ on average, now if your game is 10$ some people will complain that it's too expensive because they can get a copy of an million-dollar AAA game that is only 6 months old on sale on steam for 5$ instead); getting the public used to buying tons of games that they never play, punishing people who buy the game on launch at full price because a sale is a few weeks later

- valve controls the price of your game and decides when there will be a sale, not you (unlike the app stores etc. on most other portals where pricing is done by the developer rather than the platform holder)

- valve often buys small and independent development teams whole, and, owning their IP and funding their games, makes most of the profits that they otherwise would have made if they had continued making games independently (in exchange for giving them a wage and letting them have greater access to resources)

that said there are still good parts of steam. as a *consumer* i love them because they let me buy great games dirt cheap and have a lot of fun social networking features (friends lists etc.). but as a developer i don't think what they are doing is good for the industry

also yeah you are right about software patents vs copyright, my point was just to point out that it's funny how often being pro-IP is seen as "corporate" when IP is designed to protect creators from corporations. and this *does* include software patents

let's say some crazy guy spends 15 years inventing something; it pays off and he creates something great. it could be anything, let's say it's a technique for more effective solar panels that absorb nearly 100% of the energy of the sun that hits them that it's possible to absorb, many times more efficient than the alternatives. some corporation decides to sell his invention without his permission. without patents there's nothing protecting him; copyright doesn't protect inventions. without patents, the guy gets nothing, the corporation gets everything. and sure maybe he's an idealist and is like 'the world is better with it, i don't deserve any money for those 15 years of work' but not everyone is that idealistic, and surely he at least deserves it more than the corporations with the factories who have the resources to produce what he invented merely because they have more money

[VDZ]

let's say some crazy guy spends 15 years inventing something; it pays off and he creates something great. it could be anything, let's say it's a technique for more effective solar panels that absorb nearly 100% of the energy of the sun that hits them that it's possible to absorb, many times more efficient than the alternatives. some corporation decides to sell his invention without his permission. without patents there's nothing protecting him; copyright doesn't protect inventions. without patents, the guy gets nothing, the corporation gets everything. and sure maybe he's an idealist and is like 'the world is better with it, i don't deserve any money for those 15 years of work' but not everyone is that idealistic, and surely he at least deserves it more than the corporations with the factories who have the resources to produce what he invented merely because they have more money

Which is indeed a legit reason for a patent, but is not a software patent.

Besides which, it's arguable that that situation would be better off for the common good if there were no patents. It's not just one company stealing the guy's invention; many companies would start mass-producing these miracle panels, causing a revolution in solar energy. Competition would drive the prices down, and solar energy would become the cheapest and most efficient source of energy. If the guy were working on it for 15 years and hasn't been rewarded for it in any way, well that sucks for him but I'd say his financial interest doesn't weigh up to the greater good here. If there were patents and he's not an idealist, he'd sell his patent to a single company, which would abuse its monopoly on miracle panels to create an advantageous market position while trying to prevent other companies from creating similar panels.

However, the guy CAN still receive monetary compensation for his work even without patents. In our society, we've grown way too used to the business model where you create something for no reward first, then after you're done people pay you for the product you've delivered. It's generally a very good business model and has many advantages, but it's not the only business model. The guy working on the miracle panels could have instead received funding during those 15 years he was working on them, not just after it - pay him for the work he does, not for the work he's done. Of course, that wouldn't make him any richer than any other scientist working on high-profile projects despite creating something revolutionary, but he should still be able to get a decent amount of cash out of it. That kind of system has many disadvantages (short-term thinking makes it hard to get people to fund a long-term idea like that), but it's by no means impossible for inventors to make money without patents.