Shouldn't this be invalid due to prior art? There are so many games that already implement this mechanic. Technically if the idea is already publicly available it shouldn't be patentable, at least in Europe, not sure how it works in USA
For sure. I think it's very likely that the patent office in question didn't check for prior art so that they could save on administration costs, but I also doubt that the patent would be very useful in a court case (unless the cursor bit comes into play) as the defendant could easily present a copy of Braid or another title. With that said, Blow is certainly correct about the state of patents and their uses in the US.
You can't patent an idea at all. Only the implementation. The specific implementation. And you have to be vague while talking about specific things. That's why it all sounds like nonsense.
@@codaaaaaaaaa I would but you money if this gets to court in California they will pretend that Nintendo invented this, they are basically a pay to win system at this point and will do anything for the who ever paid the most.
@@codaaaaaaaaa lol, basically he could overturn this patent just by showing Braid to the morons who accepted the patent XD EDIT: yeah, he mentions it in the video, "this is like world 3 of braid they're talking about... where's world 4?", but I wrote the comment before watching the video XD
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time did a time reversal mechanic before Braid. Achron is an RTS that has freeform time travel and the ability to change your past orders in order to change the present, or to peek into the future.
I worked at a mobile games company that became mega successful, and management basically said the exact same thing about needing to acquire a nuclear deterrence. All employees were encourage to come up with lots of stupid patents. My name is on one for a very pedestrian game mechanic-got a small bonus for the trouble.
I mean you should be able to prove that you are the creator of an idea and get royalties when other people use it. But cannot prevent people from using the idea lol
@@bigzigtv706 It sounds nice but that would create a barrier to entry for many creators. Also look at existing patent warfare and how easy it is to claim ownership of basic functionality like "the Steve Jobs patent"
@@ViolentCriminalOrganization no i mean devolve the current patent protection system to remove the ability to completely block people from using it. Like fair use
Extremely underrated. It was an above average shooter for its time, even without the time manipulation. With the time powers it becomes a great game. Its only flaw is you can beat it in like 6 hours or even less. But again, compare that to other games of the era - duration was a common problem.
there is even a realtime strategy game with that, one of the mechanics is that as soon as you give a comand you know if you will win the battle in the future, and you can go back in time to ressurect your troopes by making them not die in the past
I wasn't able to find any updates on this. Anything I could find were the mainstream outlets trying to hype Nintendo rather than being outraged by this bad practice. Does anyone know if this was successfully filed?
I think most large companies get absurdly broad patents that, with sufficient litigation, would be completely invalidated in court. They just know that none of their smaller competitors will take the risk and go through the legal process. Edit: When the patent system was created they were trying to avoid precisely these kinds of vague concepts you see in software patents. But as patents were extended to other areas they basically dropped all of the requirements that existed for devices. Most of these patents include things that are obvious (which would invalidate a traditional utility patent,) are mere ideas (which would also invalidate a patent for a mechanical device,) and have boat loads of preexisting examples (which would also invalidate any other type of patents.) Basically the patent system for new fields like software is a completely different system from the patents for physical devices.
The issue isn't that you can fight a lawsuit and win, the issue is that if NINTENDO goes after you, you'll have to mortgage your house before you can afford enough lawyers to even show up in court, plus probably shorten your lifespan to stress by 10 years.
This is only partially true. It's absolutely the case that the initial act of hiring a legal team is often expensive (around $5k to hire a lawyer and file a motion or two, $50k-$100k for a full case that goes to trial), but you quickly run into diminishing returns after that. Basically, $50k legal teams beat million dollar legal teams all the time, provided the $50k team is squarely in the right. In this case, getting prior art in front of the patent office for this would be on the extreme low end of the price scale, probably in the $1k or less range really. This particular patent is so bad defending against a lawsuit I don't think would even hit the $50k number either. Obviously you have to be able to put up $50k, which is still a whole lot for the average person, but you can probably claw a lot of that back with a counter-suit if you win.
ah yes remember when Nintendo patented Sanity System of Eternal Darkness to have it rot for two decades since they never did a sequel since? Fabulous times
"I can team up with Microsoft." XD Microsoft does this kind of stuff themselves all the time. I remember when they basically patented the "is not" operator from Python. Can't remember if that patent was granted. [googling "Microsoft patent compare by reference operator"] Wow, that was easy to find. Says "Status: Abandoned". Whatever that means. Anyway, IMO Microsoft are also pretty much patent trolls.
Every big technology company is a patent troll. Then there are companies that exist solely as patent trolls. Their entire business is spawning large numbers of patents and then using them to extort money from others. At least companies like Microsoft and others like them also make something as well as engaging in the patent extortion racket.
They only filed the patent to prevent companies from suing them. They never go after other companies for infringing on their game mechanics, unlike KONAMI.
Patents can be good, they protect innovation from being swallowed by those with all the money. The problem here is the people with all the money are using patents to stifle innovators.
2:41 honestly there are a lot of prior art for that, your game braid, prince of persia sands of time (even the gba version had that), this patent should be rendered void, even i was able to code something like that on the past, and im the worst programmer ever. recording the movements of an object, is also what every racing game that has an "ghost of the record" do, any racing game with an time trial, reversing the ghost inst anything new.
You can't patent something that's in common use already, this is 100% corruption. Car games like Forza have been doing this for ages, Prince of Persia did it in 2003, rewind in video games is a standard feature that's been used for at least 20 years, probably way more.
ChatGPT was able to de-obfuscate that text for me very quickly. I bet a browser extension would be easy to make... What a garbage patent of very old game mechanic.
For literally everyone: patents appear incredibly arcane to a lay reader (and they are), but they are actually _extremely narrowly_ worded. 99% of a patent is just background, while a very specifically worded sentence or two about some minute aspect (ostensibly novel) will constitute the actual patent claim. I feel like this video is a bit unfairly making Blow look bad. Don’t think we should hold it against him that he doesn’t know the first thing about how to read patents. Most of the time a big company files patents, it’s to build up a defensive war chest to protect them if they ever get sued by a patent troll or an aggressor company (example: Oracle). Nintendo has zero intention of preventing other games or companies from using time reversal or undo mechanics.
What in the world do you mean this video is "unfairly" making Blow look bad? He even tweeted about it! *If* this is making him look bad it's completely because of him. I don't even think it's making him look bad. People here seem to agree with his sentiment.
@@S590573 You may be thinking of their history with copyright enforcement and takedowns. Copyrights get taken away if they aren’t at least occasionally enforced by the owners. Not enforcing can go pretty badly at times. See: Valve and Hunt Down the Freeman.
Clearly Nintendo is going back in time, trying to prevent rewind mechanic from being invented, in the past.
xD
Nintendo is going back to the future 😂
Nintendo are trying to get revenge on Jon for stealing mario and the goomba's
Shouldn't this be invalid due to prior art? There are so many games that already implement this mechanic. Technically if the idea is already publicly available it shouldn't be patentable, at least in Europe, not sure how it works in USA
For sure. I think it's very likely that the patent office in question didn't check for prior art so that they could save on administration costs, but I also doubt that the patent would be very useful in a court case (unless the cursor bit comes into play) as the defendant could easily present a copy of Braid or another title. With that said, Blow is certainly correct about the state of patents and their uses in the US.
You can't patent an idea at all. Only the implementation. The specific implementation. And you have to be vague while talking about specific things. That's why it all sounds like nonsense.
No patent office has published an examination report yet. I look forward to seeing Braid as the first citation.
@@codaaaaaaaaa I would but you money if this gets to court in California they will pretend that Nintendo invented this, they are basically a pay to win system at this point and will do anything for the who ever paid the most.
@@codaaaaaaaaa lol, basically he could overturn this patent just by showing Braid to the morons who accepted the patent XD
EDIT: yeah, he mentions it in the video, "this is like world 3 of braid they're talking about... where's world 4?", but I wrote the comment before watching the video
XD
Prince of Persia: Sands of Time did a time reversal mechanic before Braid.
Achron is an RTS that has freeform time travel and the ability to change your past orders in order to change the present, or to peek into the future.
When is he stating that he invented the mechanic? He actually mentions PoP at 4:15
@@soyunbonus I'm responding to Nintendo patenting time rewind. Braid isn't the only prior art.
I worked at a mobile games company that became mega successful, and management basically said the exact same thing about needing to acquire a nuclear deterrence. All employees were encourage to come up with lots of stupid patents. My name is on one for a very pedestrian game mechanic-got a small bonus for the trouble.
intellectual "property rights" is absolute nonsense
I mean you should be able to prove that you are the creator of an idea and get royalties when other people use it. But cannot prevent people from using the idea lol
@@bigzigtv706 It sounds nice but that would create a barrier to entry for many creators. Also look at existing patent warfare and how easy it is to claim ownership of basic functionality like "the Steve Jobs patent"
@@ViolentCriminalOrganization no i mean devolve the current patent protection system to remove the ability to completely block people from using it. Like fair use
It was written by two attorney's that had to keep waking the other one up
Now I remember the game Timeshift, good times.
Extremely underrated. It was an above average shooter for its time, even without the time manipulation. With the time powers it becomes a great game. Its only flaw is you can beat it in like 6 hours or even less. But again, compare that to other games of the era - duration was a common problem.
there is even a realtime strategy game with that, one of the mechanics is that as soon as you give a comand you know if you will win the battle in the future, and you can go back in time to ressurect your troopes by making them not die in the past
I wasn't able to find any updates on this. Anything I could find were the mainstream outlets trying to hype Nintendo rather than being outraged by this bad practice. Does anyone know if this was successfully filed?
appearntly got rejected if i understood correctly
How's he gonna react when he finds out that Nintendo is now trying to patent "the game character moves with the thing they're riding on"?
I think most large companies get absurdly broad patents that, with sufficient litigation, would be completely invalidated in court. They just know that none of their smaller competitors will take the risk and go through the legal process.
Edit: When the patent system was created they were trying to avoid precisely these kinds of vague concepts you see in software patents. But as patents were extended to other areas they basically dropped all of the requirements that existed for devices. Most of these patents include things that are obvious (which would invalidate a traditional utility patent,) are mere ideas (which would also invalidate a patent for a mechanical device,) and have boat loads of preexisting examples (which would also invalidate any other type of patents.) Basically the patent system for new fields like software is a completely different system from the patents for physical devices.
The issue isn't that you can fight a lawsuit and win, the issue is that if NINTENDO goes after you, you'll have to mortgage your house before you can afford enough lawyers to even show up in court, plus probably shorten your lifespan to stress by 10 years.
This is only partially true. It's absolutely the case that the initial act of hiring a legal team is often expensive (around $5k to hire a lawyer and file a motion or two, $50k-$100k for a full case that goes to trial), but you quickly run into diminishing returns after that.
Basically, $50k legal teams beat million dollar legal teams all the time, provided the $50k team is squarely in the right.
In this case, getting prior art in front of the patent office for this would be on the extreme low end of the price scale, probably in the $1k or less range really. This particular patent is so bad defending against a lawsuit I don't think would even hit the $50k number either.
Obviously you have to be able to put up $50k, which is still a whole lot for the average person, but you can probably claw a lot of that back with a counter-suit if you win.
ah yes remember when Nintendo patented Sanity System of Eternal Darkness to have it rot for two decades since they never did a sequel since? Fabulous times
Remember the nemesis system?
@@elbowjuice2627 I remember it but I wasn't aware that WB Games patented it 2021, ugh.
Jon blow is my spirit animal
S/W patents are a complete crock.
S/W?
@@platinumsun4632 software
@@platinumsun4632 Software I suppose.
Hahah! Loving the zooms when he is typing the tweets 😂
I can't wait to put the lime in the coconut and do the thing so that I can get sued by Jonathan Blow
Both the US and JP patents are still pending as of August 2022. They have been pending since December 2021
Sounds like one of the abilities shown in the second Breath of the Wild 2 trailer.
"I can team up with Microsoft." XD
Microsoft does this kind of stuff themselves all the time. I remember when they basically patented the "is not" operator from Python. Can't remember if that patent was granted. [googling "Microsoft patent compare by reference operator"] Wow, that was easy to find. Says "Status: Abandoned". Whatever that means. Anyway, IMO Microsoft are also pretty much patent trolls.
Every big technology company is a patent troll. Then there are companies that exist solely as patent trolls. Their entire business is spawning large numbers of patents and then using them to extort money from others. At least companies like Microsoft and others like them also make something as well as engaging in the patent extortion racket.
The bloated language they use to try to make this seem like an original idea kills me.
Don't read the background and summary. Read the claims. Summaries are generally full of boilerplate, but the claims contain what is being patented.
They only filed the patent to prevent companies from suing them. They never go after other companies for infringing on their game mechanics, unlike KONAMI.
Yep, exactly. Companies need defensive war chests of patents.
@Andai It's not protection, just deterrence.
Is that the TotK reverse mechanic?
there's no way they'll sue anyone with that, prior art
all knowledge is common knowledge from now on, patents are childish money greed
@Dootie Patent and copyright are not the same and both are important. Though both are far too powerful.
@Dootie Without copyright there would be no movies or games.
Patents can be good, they protect innovation from being swallowed by those with all the money. The problem here is the people with all the money are using patents to stifle innovators.
@@frankN326 bs. law is stupid
@@frankN326 money is stupid
LMAO guess we know what this game is for now.
2:41 honestly there are a lot of prior art for that, your game braid, prince of persia sands of time (even the gba version had that), this patent should be rendered void, even i was able to code something like that on the past, and im the worst programmer ever.
recording the movements of an object, is also what every racing game that has an "ghost of the record" do, any racing game with an time trial, reversing the ghost inst anything new.
1:06
Q: What game is this for?
A: Braid 2
You can't patent something that's in common use already, this is 100% corruption. Car games like Forza have been doing this for ages, Prince of Persia did it in 2003, rewind in video games is a standard feature that's been used for at least 20 years, probably way more.
Rip them (an USPTO) a new one on your prior art.
like trying to patent brush strokes on paintings
Whatever, Apple has patent on a phone being rectangular.
ChatGPT was able to de-obfuscate that text for me very quickly. I bet a browser extension would be easy to make... What a garbage patent of very old game mechanic.
The taste of a carbonated patent
Software patents shouldn't exist. Neither should software copyright.
recall ability for tears of the kingdom
Software patents are always silly
Patents are obtuse because legal procedures are SO open.
This is the future you chose, JBlow. How's that fancy thing you call Neolib economics doing now?
He is the one who chooses our future???
@@tenhovergonha7692 :)
@@tenhovergonha7692 vergonha de que?
@@chao3948 de colocar meu nome aqui. kkkkkkk
@@tenhovergonha7692 kkk
What the f
Oh boy what is this 😂😂😂😂
I think they did this to stop Genshin Impact from copying their game.
For literally everyone: patents appear incredibly arcane to a lay reader (and they are), but they are actually _extremely narrowly_ worded. 99% of a patent is just background, while a very specifically worded sentence or two about some minute aspect (ostensibly novel) will constitute the actual patent claim.
I feel like this video is a bit unfairly making Blow look bad. Don’t think we should hold it against him that he doesn’t know the first thing about how to read patents.
Most of the time a big company files patents, it’s to build up a defensive war chest to protect them if they ever get sued by a patent troll or an aggressor company (example: Oracle). Nintendo has zero intention of preventing other games or companies from using time reversal or undo mechanics.
What in the world do you mean this video is "unfairly" making Blow look bad? He even tweeted about it! *If* this is making him look bad it's completely because of him. I don't even think it's making him look bad. People here seem to agree with his sentiment.
Nintendo is extremely litigious and has every intention of enforcing their patent. They're the only ones responsible *to* enforce it
The point of Patents if for government to declare who gets a monopoly and gets to make money.
@@lastburning I guess you made my point more perfectly than I ever could.
@@S590573 You may be thinking of their history with copyright enforcement and takedowns. Copyrights get taken away if they aren’t at least occasionally enforced by the owners.
Not enforcing can go pretty badly at times. See: Valve and Hunt Down the Freeman.
Blow's a peen puffer, but Nintendo loves playing the flesh flute even more.
this shouldn't matter at all sense it's basically unenforceable right?
ᑭяỖｍｏ𝓼𝐦