This news story got me thinking.

The story can be summed up as follows: The people who made the video game Crazy Taxi are suing the people who made the video game Simpsons: Road Rage because it is a blatant rip-off of the Crazy Taxi gameplay style. In fact, Sega claims to hold a patent on that gameplay style.

But if Road Rage uses completely different code, different graphics, different music, different art, and different characters, then its only provable similarity is the basic gameplay mechanic: driving cars and picking up passengers and delivering them to their destinations. And from one point of view, the gameplay mechanic is more or less the equivalent of a plot line in a movie.

First off, I question the validity of the patent they were granted for Crazy Taxi. You can't patent a plot line, can you?

But more importantly, even if they were deliberately copying the style of Crazy Taxi, there are many much more blatant examples of such rip-offs in many kinds of media, including video games and movies. How many Space Invaders rip-offs have you seen since Atari's original? How many first-person-shooter video games have been written since Wolfenstein and Doom? How many movies came out in the same year which were all about asteroids hitting the earth? How many books came out about boy wizards? How many identical-sounding rap songs about life as a gangsta are there on the radio today?

It made me remember the lawsuit that Huey Lewis and the News brought against the person who wrote the theme to Ghostbusters. If I recall correctly, it was alleged that the Ghostbusters theme was carefully crafted to be stylistically similar to I Want a New Drug when it was commissioned. They settled out of court, so no legal precedent got set with that case.

But where is the line drawn between plagiarizing a work, and merely trying to capitalize on a market that favors a certain style? As much as I hate "me-too" media, I don't see a problem with someone trying to grab a piece of market share by creating a similar but competing product.

Gets you to thinking about the nature of patents... Where's the line between a patent and a monopoly? A successful patent would shut out all your competition...

Discuss.

Hmm... I see YAIPD (Yet Another Intellectual Property Debate) about to start.

patents suck. fuck intellectual property. kill the arabs.

that should get things going.

The latest variation that sickened me more than I wish to discuss is the fact that the company I work for patented a method for circumventing spam filters. So, I am wondering if we are going into the spamming business... Granted, if I read the text of the patent itself, I think they are trying to show how easy it is to get around existing anti-spam technology. Weird way to prove a point, though.

Seriously though. I don't think a certain theme or style should be patented. That's different from say a chair or a wheel. Next thing you know, some fag on a home decorating tv show will patent a certain living room arrangement.

I read a book on patents once. I remember there are like 3 or 4 different kinds of patents, like there's one type used for plants only. Maybe this video game theme is one of the other types of patents.

there are many much more blatant examples of such rip-offs in many kinds of media, including video games and movies

<cough>Tetris</cough>

Have you played GTA III or Vice City? You pretty much get Crazy Taxi thrown in for free as you can hop in a taxi and press a button and do the same thing. Granted I think Crazy Taxi is more fun in that respect b/c the driving is less realistic. None the less, the same "plot" is still there.

Then you have movies. "Last Man Standing" is a plot-line rip from "A Fistful of Dollars" which is a remake of "Yojimbo". But who's ever heard of "Yojimbo"? "A Fistful of Dollars" is (unfortunatly) becoming an unheard of movie as well. So is it ok to rip-off if your ripping from an old subject? What about all the movies that are take-offs of Shakespere plays?

Truthfuly, though it would never hold up in court, I think plagiarism (in this sense, not the accademic) can be summed up as "You know it when you see it". So in that sense, do I think that Simpsons: Road Rage is plagiarism? No, if people want to play Crazy Taxi they will buy Crazy Taxi.

In my opinion, patents should exist to protect a specific way of doing something. That is, if you developed the mousetrap, then the patent would be for a bar attached to a spring kept under tension by a hairtrigger designed to activate when a mouse stepped on it. It wouldn't be for a device used to kill mice.

Of course, my example also shouldn't be allowed because the design is trivial. In this case because it's existed and everyone's known about it so long. In other cases because it's the obvious way to do something. That is, even if no one ever came up with the idea of a closed door before, no one should be allowed a patent on covering it with a flat piece of wood.

The reasons patents exist is because it used to be trivial to take someone's mousetrap apart and see how it worked, thus becoming your blueprint for copying them. The patent says ``Here's how we did it, and you can't do the same thing.'' The reason they exist is so that entrepreneurs and inventors can't have their product undercut by someone with deeper pockets.

The idea of patenting an idea is obviously ridiculous and the patent office needs its rules hardened. I think a great way to do it is to open it up to peer review. The government obviously can't or won't spend the money to get competent people to review patent applications, so put the people who are experts on the line. Make one of the fees of people who receive patents to become a member of a jury on some number of incoming patents that fit in their fields. This might be a lot of work, but it can't be more than the patent offices currently deal with.

And make patents revokable when it's shown that their content is trivial. Again, peer review.

Ahh, I'm getting all worked up.

I also think that anyone who applies for a software patent should have to include the source code of the thing they're trying to patent in the application. If no one else can then use that code, then it doesn't make any difference that it's publically available.

I think Rockstar are a cooler group of people, so it's most likely they won't sue for the similarity between Simpsons: Hit & Run and GTA III. Besides, Sega should realize that Road Rage was a bad game, so there's not much point in suing.

I think the Ghostbusters thing was a little different. I think that the film makers had previously tried to buy the song I Want a New Drug, but were turned down. But then the theme song was made and sounded exactly like it, so they sued.

I think you can patent just about anything you want to. The question is whether it will hold up in court or not. Most likely the example of the video game would not.

I worked for a company that had a very specific way of doing something that was far superior to anything else in the industry. No one else was willing to try it because they didn't want to risk something new. My company was able to sell systems at 1/5th the price because of our technique, which we patented. Once others in the industry saw it working, however, they decided to jump on board. Because we were a small startup we didn't have the cash-flow that they did and they effectively ran us out of the market. Now my previous boss (Because he had to let go of all the developers) is doing the only thing he can: suing for copyright infringement, because they are very obviously doing exactly what we were in the same way. They wouldn't do a thing until we proved it was possible, now they're going to run with it. I think in this case the purpose of the patent was to reward the little guy for being inventive and competitive. Of course, we'll have to see what the courts, and that is probably mostly dependent on who can afford the best lawyers.

You mean suing for patent infringement, not copyright infringement, right?
-brendan

The patent system is so royally F'd that a guy in Australia patented the wheel

On another note, my best friends wife is a patent laywer, so if anybody has a question for her, let me know.

I have several patents to my name. That the patent is to protect the little guy is perhaps the largest urban myth running. A patent only gives you the right to prosecute when you think you've been infringed. While this is certainly better than no protection at all, prosecuting a patent suit is a _very_ expensive proposition. Even preparing and filing a suit costs a good deal of money. To a small cash-starved company (or individual) without the means to mount a suit a patent is worthless. You have to prove the other guy is guilty of infringement. This can take years, and you can very easily lose on some arcane detail or oversight on your (or your lawyers') part. Patents are tools for those with money to make more money. If you haven't got the cash to fight you might as well have no patent at all, in my opinion.

While I don't believe patents should be abolished, the patent system is rife with possibility for manipulation by those with the money to do so, just like mainstream politics.

-Zeke

a method for circumventing spam filters

I thought that it might be cleverer than that. You patent a mechanism for circumventing spam filters. Then, when the spammer circumvents a spam filter using your method, you sue him for patent infringement. You don't have to use the patent yourself.

I would have hoped so, but let's just say that this company is not necessarily the brightest when it comes to that kind of thing. A plan like that involves significant forethought - something I do not credit my company with in the most recent decade...

Ironically, we are the ones who won the contract for, and host, the US Do Not Call Registry...

You mean suing for patent infringement, not copyright infringement, right?

Right!

That the patent is to protect the little guy is perhaps the largest urban myth running.

That's what it was designed for. What you described is what it's turned into due to the also unfortunate nature of our court systems.