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DukeZhou
DukeZhou
17:20
@DonQuiKong Not seeing how to vote on the synonyms (perhaps I don't yet have enough cred) but they look fine to me
@DonQuiKong Regarding games, it's a form of creative expression that is mechanistic, and has been traditionally protected by patent. (Think Monopoly and Magic: The Gathering). Compared to copyright, the traditional protector of creative work, Patent has a paltry time-frame (20 years vs. lifetime of creator + 70) and is furthermore not automatic in the way copyright is.
However, there is some movement in copyright towards protecting mechanics: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
Philosophically, novel game mechanics may be the hardest thing to create (nearly all new games utilize existing mechanics and are merely hybrids.) This is because the mathematics are so unforgiving, and in the case of non-trivial, partisan games, achieving the necessary "emergent complexity" is nearly impossible.
But serious games are useful and lead to innovation. If there is no protection, there is no incentive for creators to expend the resources to create novel mechanics, except for their own edification
(If you're interested, I'll link you to a copy of my application so you can see what I'm talking about. I have a small set of novel mechanics that extend Game Theory, Combinatorial Game Theory, and may lead to useful techniques in an array of applied fields, and is a compelling product that could garner hundreds of millions of downloads in the near term.
The effort to create and validate the mechanics were enormous, and it's concerning that there is a gap in protection for IP that is both creative and mechanistic--much more difficult to produce than IP is one or the other.
[And PS, you would only be liable for cloning protected IP without a license--I'd think you'd prefer to know it was Patent Protected as opposed to hoping you haven't inadvertently violated a copyright, such as in the case of Tetris vs. Xiao;]
DonQuiKong
DonQuiKong
17:38
@DukeZhou you need some like 4 or 5 upvotes on the tag I think
Well I didn't invent a game, that was hypothetical. I see you have put some time into researching this, it's surely interesting. The EPC however especially excludes games from patentability. I guess an algorithm can be patentable there too if formulated accordingly, but it's probably hard
art 52. epc excludes: "schemes, rules and methods for performing mental acts, playing games or doing business, and programs for computers; "
 
4 hours later…
DonQuiKong
DonQuiKong
21:43
@DukeZhou you have to click on the respective tag to vote
Eric Shain
Eric Shain
22:01
In an effort to further discussion about how to respond to prior art requests, I posted the question to the StackExchange Meta site. It garnered a fair amount of feedback. Here is the link: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/293153/directing-prior-art-searches-from-ask-patents?noredirect=1#comment952702_293153

Please read through that question and provide feedback here. Also my question resulted in the following question on Meta StackOverflow :https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/346236/would-it-be-appropriate-to-draw-attention-to-ask-patents-software-prior-art-requ
DukeZhou
DukeZhou
@DonQuiKong The types of games I'm talking about are quite fundamental and are algorithms. (In truth, copyright protection is far more advantageous, but patents have been the traditional method until recently.) I think there's a disconnect because the overwhelming majority of games are not useful. The useful games, however, are quite important in regards to expansion of knowledge and capability
But it's somewhat esoteric, and I'm not surprised legislators and bureaucrats do not have sufficient context or information on the subject
Laws are not always just, but the idea is to constantly strive to make them so

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