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| 05.25.2007RE: Patent Strategy in the Game Industry
Gamasutra needs to quit publishing articles by lawyers looking to make a buck in the game industry by telling us how great it will be when we all patent our game mechanics. It's a crock and no one in their right mind in industry should be supporting it.
If Spielberg woke up one morning and decided to patent the dolly shot he'd be laughed out of film. Game designers constantly build on what came before. We work in a high pressure, rapid turnaround environment where worrying about stepping on a patent could stifle production at critical moments. We don't duplicate the designs of others, we modify, expand, and sometimes improve on them. Even if a game copies the exact mechanic found in another title it is still second to market and has lost the first mover advantage.
By the time a patent is actually granted (as the authors of the article admit, it can take a few years) the original game is in the bargain bin and anybody who has 'infringed' on the patent is probably there as well. Industry has moved on, something new is always just around the corner. Heck, the team responsible for creating the game will have been long disbanded. The last thing an independent studio needs is to get slapped with a patent lawsuit a few years after they released the title. We've got enough problems without that crap.
We don't need patents, we don't want patents, so quit trying to sell them to us.-James Everett
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Letters to the Editor
