[casual_games] Gameplay patents

[Daniel James]

On Mon, 12 Feb 2007, Thomas H. Buscaglia wrote:


> Well if you think that any investor would rather have you be so 

> cavalier as to risk "his" intellectual capital by not protecting it, 

> you are wrong.


Sir, I have a number of investors, and I speak regularly to many others. 
They tend to think just as I describe, and would rather I spend my time 
and their money making games and building a company. You might reply 
that my investors are therefore 'dumb', but I would argue quite the 
opposite. But, let us leave this matter aside, as clearly there's no 
proof either way.

As an aside, some prospective investors have questioned our 
open-sourcing of much of our code base. We may tend to swim in the 
'open' waters, but there's little question of the prevailing tide, at 
least here in the dorkosphere.


> Harmonix has lots of patents...in fact they are sort of a poster child 

> for a solid IP management model.  And Harmonix is also able to self 

> fund their development and thereby get a much higher % of royalties 

> because of their banking relationship.  You see years ago they were 

> able to go to a bank and get a line of credit secured by those 

> patents.  Not secured by their prior hits...but on those nasty 

> patents.


Wow. That is pretty extraordinary, you have to admit. I doubt that many 
banks would be happy to extend loans based on patents that aren't 
generating substantial third-part licensing fees (afiak Harmonix has 
never licensed its patents).

I am all about self-funding. I am in favour of the approach of 
self-funding via *revenue*, which tends to come from making good things 
that people buy.

My point is that the patents are not relevant apart from in the context 
of considerable success with execution, and that you jeopardise your 
execution by focusing on expensive legal work early in the process and 
anti-competitive legal machinations later, none of which are actually 
likely to help you *make money*.

Again, there's no definitive answer to be had here, so we'll just have 
to pursue our religions and see who's laughing on the other side. You 
can't fault me for trying to convert the odd heathen, though.

- Daniel

http://thefloggingwillcontinue.com/