I’m not against patents in general but looking at the list of specific insanity-induced hallucinations being patented this whole thing is ridiculous. This is on the level of being able to patent giving your restaurant guests cutlery. How is any designer supposed to keep track of which specific micro events are patented like this.
I am against all game design patents in general. You shouldn’t be able to file a patent on game mechanics, like no movie director could have filed a patent on, say, the idea of sequence shot.
Game content (art, characters, etc) is already protected by copyright. Patents have absolutely no business in this.
Wholly agreed. In general the concept that “you can’t patent an idea” or “you can’t patent a general concept” is supposed to be at the heart of patent law. I think some of these game mechanics parents, like this and the Nemesis System, go against that too much.
