[casual_games] RE: game copyright

[David Wessman]

I guess the question this raises for me is what good is a legal system that
doesn't protect the weak from exploitation and harm at the hands of the
strong? If the purpose of patents is to protect and encourage innovation,
then it seems you'd want to ensure that you don't empower big corporations
to squash little ones through legal maneuvers rather than the competitive
advantages of having a better product. You'd also want to prevent people
from filing patents simply to maliciously prevent others from using a new
idea.
  I found Wikipedia to have some very informative articles on patents.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent

 I learned that there's a difference in U.S. patent law between utility patents
and design patents. Design patents seem the most problematic, and I assume
this is what Sega is seeking to defend.

In a case like this, it seems absurd that you could patent "pedestrians
diving out of the way" in a driving game. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the
1976 arcade game Death Race had pedestrians trying to avoid getting run
over. Translating this to 3d, while non-trivial on the engineering side, is
obvious on the conceptual side once 3d technology provides the means. So,
too, the idea of a floating arrow pointing towards your goal. Plenty of
flight combat games released prior to Crazy Taxi had the equivalent feature
to tell the player where their currently off-screen target was located. In
other words, doesn't Sega's patent fail the requirement that it be both
"novel" and "non-obvious"? It seems the patent examiner erred in granting
this patent in the first place, in which case Radical's challenge should
prevail. This in no way excuses the rather blatant rip-off of Crazy Taxi,
but so what? Artists in every medium shamelessly rip each other off all the
time.

Thanks for reading,
David Wessman
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