Patents genuinely are wonderful. The rockstar devs are going to be rewarded for their innovation. They will hire out licenses so that other games can use the tech they developed.
As someone who is in the field of intellectual property, Lemmy’s views on IP boil down to “I attended Marxism 101 and want to pirate games”. Most here don’t have a clue how much time, effort and money is spent on innovation. They couldn’t even begin to fathom why protecting intellectual property helps people actually helps people get paid for their work, which is ironic as they are all for people being rewarded for their actual labour.
There is literally a 1:1 correlation between protecting IP and R&D and innovation. Start ups that patent their ideas are genuinely more successful. You’re naive if you think IP only helps protect large companies.
I wish people who base their entire knowledge of intellectual property on video games would just stop attempting to have opinions on things they don’t really understand.
If you think it’s fine to have a world in which people aren’t protected for their fruits of their labour, then by all means advocate against IP. I would rather live in a world in which people are actually paid for the ideas they come up with and don’t have to excessively keep corporate secrets.
Open source software is different due to informed consent. When working on an OS project you are doing it out of altruism and/or fun, fully realising that you will never be compensated for this work. That doesn’t mean software devs should never be paid and work for free indefinitely on anything they do. Its still a skill that should be compensated for.
I work in patents. If it wasn’t novel it wouldn’t be granted, believe me.
My experience with clients has led me to never trust lay people’s judgements on what is or is not novel.
Feel free to actually read the examiner’s comments in this patent application for an actually full understanding of the process
Or better still if you think you are able to assess novelty though a 5 minute cursory read of a patent without any reference to prior art, feel free to do my job for me. You’re clearly much more efficient and unbiased and definitely aren’t cutting any corners in your evaluation. Both in understanding the law and understanding how to assess novelty in a proper way.
Novelty is assessed against all publicly disclosed prior art, not just the stuff that has been patented.
If I publish content on a webpage that could be used as prior art later on assessing novelty.
If I invent a special lawnmower and only show my friends and family and never sell it or patent it, that could still count as public disclosure and be used against anyone wishing to patent a similar lawnmower.
Everyone in this thread is downvoting me because they are trying to out Marxist each other. I have never once claimed the patent system is perfect, but the people in this thread clearly don’t actually understand what is required to even receive a patent.
It’s typical, people know what systems they are against but never know what they are actually for. People say patents are unfair but never propose viable alternatives. The political analysis on Lemmy is frankly juvenile and utopic. People base their opinions on what team they support rather than any sort of analysis of the problem. Populism is rife here and people gravitate toards populist narratives in lieu of thinking. I’m very glad the demography of Lemmy is not representative of society at large.
I said they’re wonderful, not that they’re perfect. Clearly you need to work on your reading comprehension. The alternative is giant corporations stealing everybody’s ideas without anybody trying to stop them in any way.
Fuck off corpo.
Cringe. One day you’ll have to grow up and get a real job. Then you’ll look back at how embarrassingly assured you were of having the answers to everything after real life smacks you in the face and makes you realise you don’t know shit.
Go on then. How do we replace the patent system whilst still acknowledging mental effort and research as being valued forms of work? Tell me all about it mate, I’m interested in your ideas as you’re so convinced it’s all a big con.
You can’t grant a patent for something that is already in the public domain at the time of filing, regardless of whether or not that thing is currently patent protected.
Edit: this is such a funny comment to want to downvote. “Fuck you with your legitimate factual information!”
They would only be able to get away with this if it had already been determined that they did indeed invent that thing. Many choose not to fight cease and desists when it would be in their best interest to counter claim.
I’ve protected people who have been attempted to be bullied by a larger company into ceasing production of a product. That’s literally my job.
Patent attorneys are a highly regulated profession which have to adhere to strict ethical standards and rigorous training in the law. I serve the interests of my clients. It doesn’t matter if you’re a large or small enterprise, the law is interpreted exactly the same throughout the process.
I would suggest reducing official fees to make it easier to purchase a patent, but that just reduces the quality of examination. In reality there is a balance to be struck between affordable patents and quality of patents which isn’t always struck correctly. I would advocate for government funded organisations that provide pro bono legal support for small enterprises as a way to make the system a little fairer. In the US they have a tiered system which makes patents cheaper for smaller companies, which is also something I think that should be adopted as standard.
Overall there is no simple solution. Life is complicated and messy and anybody who claims it isn’t is and that there are simple solutions to very layered societal problems are snake oil salesmen with an agenda.
If it was something you already did prior to filing and you could prove it then their case would be extremely flimsy, but I do understand where you come from.
It really depends on jurisdiction, in the UK it’s not possible to even patent software. In Europe it is, but regulations are strict. The US patent law is a little bit wonky in this regard.
You’ve not even referenced the claims of the patent, which is actually what is protected. It’s already extremely likely the examiner has flagged these up as prior art and more and still passed it as allowable after a thorough novelty search and several rounds of amendments. Lots of things are sort of like other inventions but what they actually do lies outside of the claim scope.
The invention is not what is patented, the claims are. There are undoubtedly novel features in the claims or again the examiner wouldn’t allow it.
Barring a performance of a full novelty search where you break down the claims and compare them to the prior art individually, you aren’t convincing me that the claims aren’t novel.
Assessing novelty is one of the most difficult parts of being a patent attorney and can’t be done with a cursory search.
If you think you can do better than a patent office examiner get on it because they’re extremely well paid.
Or maybe you could stop and draw a line under what you think is correct. Have you ever considered the possibility that actually you haven’t got the first clue how to properly analyse a patent because it’s a profession that requires extensive training and eye to detail?
I know on the internet it’s fun to pretend you actually know everything because everything is a Google search away but to even properly contextualise and separate good patents and bad patents isn’t a skill you can just pick up in 5 minutes to win an argument.
I love how you quoted an invention summary as though that was all there is to the technology.
If it wasn’t novel or inventive, they wouldn’t have received a patent for it. They’re not just giving them away for a laugh, there is an entire independent process to determine whether something is worth patenting.
If you knew anything about US patents you will know there will have been an extensive analysis of potential prior art. To grant a US patent you need to provide an extensive information disclosure statement and examiners can combine bits of prior art to try and argue against novelty and inventiveness.
Clearly the claim scope that has been protected with this patent has been deemed to be novel by the USPTO.
As someone who works in intellectual property it is very much real. Unless you think people shouldn’t receive rewards for their mental efforts in much the same way as physical labour?
Ideas certainly will become scarce products if people aren’t protected for having them.
Of course you can steal someone’s intellectual property. If you copy someone’s idea you are depriving that person from profiting from said idea and depriving them of income. There is a limit on how many people can profit from a given idea.
Intellectual property protects those who innovate against predatory practices. You are displaying naivety for who intellectual property is seeking to protect. By not enshrining IP in law you are literally stopping people from earning money from their mental labour.
If IP law didn’t exist why would anybody spend their time and money researching and creating new inventions if someone can come along and steal their idea?
So if someone spend thousands of hours and a lot of money on researching a new invention that would benefit people, you don’t believe they should reap the rewards of said invention without a competitor stealing their idea? You’re basically advocating for people not to be paid for their work
People’s views on IP boil down to: I want to pirate games. None of you are thinking about patents and trademarks and how they benefit people from having their work shat on. Lemmy is infuriating.
Ironically by not advocating for IP you are depriving people from earning from their valuable mental labour.
If I invent something and spend time, effort and money into developing it, I should be allowed to be rewarded for that effort. If a competitor comes along and steals my idea without putting the wok in, I am absolutely being deprived of all the value of my hard work. That’s how someone can steal your intellectual property.
Ive played more games with more variety through game pass this last few years than I ever have in the rest of my life combined. The vast majority of that I didn’t pay a penny for, just did some 5 minute daily tasks to earn Microsoft points and occasionally the odd game pass quest.
GTA 6 has patented a new locomotion system to make "highly dynamic and realistic animations" (www.eurogamer.net)
GTA 6 has patented a new locomotion system to make "highly dynamic and realistic animations" (www.eurogamer.net)
AITAH for pirating games before buying them?
Nowadays, the absolute vast majority of games that I play are shit tbh....
PS5 Slim Requires an Internet Connection For Its Detachable Disc Drive (insider-gaming.com)