Open Source Board Gaming
Yehuda has issued a Call for Open Source Board Gaming, prompted by the fears that game mechanics are getting locked up by patents.
Certainly, if game designers themselves cannot agree on what the core elements making up a game are, it’s troublesome that a patent official is going to decide whether a given innovation is significant enough to be protectible. Yehuda has another post where he lists off some recent patents.
It certainly wouldn’t be too hard to arrive at a large number of generic game mechanics and “put them in the public domain” in some fashion by releasing them under some sort of open source license. The question is whether you’d then have trouble profiting off of them — after all, board games are difficult to profit off of as it is!
Certainly, anything that stifles innovation as regards creative product of any sort is something to be worried about. As recent discussions here in comment threads about appropriation and reinvention of cultural product demonstrate, cloning, copying, and varying existing creative content is a critical part of the development of fresh innovative content.
I tend to support intellectual property rights fairly strongly. However, I think patents have gotten out of hand in our and related industries. The biggest problem is that the patent office tends to grant just about anything and then expect the courts to figure out which patents are good and which are invalid. The problem is that it’s damned expensive to go to court over one of these things. According to some lawyers I’m on good terms with, you an expect to spend anywhere between $500,000 – $2,000,000 on a simple patent defense. In other words, if one of these game makers thinks you’re violating their patent, expect to pony up that much money even if it’s clear that you are not infringing. If there’s any doubt, expect that figure to start ballooning. In the razor-thin margins of board games, this could kill a company.
So, when they company says, “We can settle for a mere $200,000”, that starts to look really attractive whether you need the license or not, according to the law. Find 5 saps and you have a cool million just for filing a patent. Even if that patent probably falls into the “obvious” category.
It’s turned into a racket.
I’m currently developing board and tabletop rules as a free tie-in to my computer game project; does patent protection extend to freely distributed content?
…does patent protection extend to freely distributed content?
Not 100% sure what you mean here, but let me give some information. Keep in mind I’m not a lawyer, this isn’t law advice, and you should see a competent lawyer to get your questions answered properly. Now that you can’t sue me… 😉
If someone else holds a patent, distributing mechanics covered by their patent without a license, even for free, is a violation. You can sometimes get into more trouble if you’re actually making money off of it, but distributing something for free doesn’t take you out of the hot seat.
If you’re asking if a patent you have will still cover stuff you distribute for free, the answer is yes. The problem is, of course, that getting a patent isn’t cheap. You can expect to spend about a minimum of $10k to file a patent properly with a lawyer. This gets expensive if you want a nice variety of mechanics for various games. Even if you do have patents, you might still get sued. You have a greater chance of just having to cross-license patents, but given the figures I list above for the minimum cost for a patent defense, you might end up screwed if someone decides they don’t like you.
As I said, it’s turned into a racket. Your best option is to pray you fly below the radar until you make enough mad cash to afford to play the game. Even then, it can be touch-and-go.
Some info,