Is it possible to know if a mechanic you want to apply to a game is patented before applying it or do you only find out when you are sued?
Is it possible to know if a mechanic you want to apply to a game is patented before applying it or do you only find out when you are sued?
Yes you can. This is the patent for the "Nemesis characters, nemesis forts, social vendettas and followers in computer games:
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160279522A1/en
American and Japanese companies especially patent as much as they can in video games.
That entire page goes WAY over my head so I’ll take your word for it, hah.
That’s just what a patent looks like. The patent number, the designer, and who holds it. Then a summary. Designs. And description of how it functions.
But yeah, it’s all legal talk so it’s a chore to read. Don’t feel bad, Einstein worked in a patent office.
Here’s a much simplier example thats far easier to understand, but has all the same details:
https://patents.google.com/patent/USD709328S1/en?q=(lightbulb)&page=1
Drinking glass with inverted lightbulb enclosed within the drinking glass
That patent is essentially trying to say that if you do anything more than a randomly selected behaviour, based on a database, related to previous user interactions, you are infringing the patent. At the same time, the mechanics in the filed patent also depend upon the creation of a database based on the user’s past behaviour.
The implications are just that, if you have more lawyer money than WB, then you can make and sell your game.