“Coordinating real-world gatherings to promote an online community, the method including: encouraging participants of the online community to participate in a real-world gathering by providing incentives for the participants; promoting familiarity among the participants by providing and introducing online community titles of the participants at the real-world gathering; and providing online benefits or rewards to the participants for participating in the real-world gathering. Keywords include socializing in the real world, community building and bridging the gap between the game world and the real world.”
Hard to believe this company who has lost BILLIONS of dollars think they can get away with something so ridiculous. I'm starting to think Sony is in a unstoppable death spiral. They have failed in most everything they have done with the PS3, and I'm so glad I never bought one.
Hard to believe this company who has lost BILLIONS of dollars think they can get away with something so ridiculous. I'm starting to think Sony is in a unstoppable death spiral. They have failed in most everything they have done with the PS3, and I'm so glad I never bought one.
They're probably giddily imagining licensing this patent out to the entire industry *snort-chuckle*
Is there some kind of Douchebag award we can present to sony as a whole? "Corporate Douche Of The Year?"
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As someone who has a fine appreciation for being an asshole, I have to admit, this is kinda awesome. I actually kinda hope they succeed, just because of how much it would piss people off. They've actually reached the point where I believe that they aren't actually serious about this stuff, and are just trolling the internet for laughs.
I try to reserve judgement on patent issues. Online communities typically misunderstand what's at issue (the claims matter, the rest is irrelevant).
But this is exactly as horrible and stupid as it sounds. And it's not only a horrible and stupid thing to try and patent, but it underscores how horrible and stupid "business method" patents truly are. (And a good chunk of software patents too.)
Even if you're optimistic that the examiner will strike some claims and massively narrow the patent down, the resulting nonsense that actually stands a good chance of passing through is:
A patent over mmo players gathering in real life and being given a mobile game (potentially with some sort of map) that grants them challenges and in-game rewards for things like locating their friends; the central server and database to run all that; and some sort of in-game window onto those proceedings.
And while that's certainly novel (I can't say I've heard of anyone doing that specifically) it's still pants-on-head retarded to grant a patent for it.
Is that even legal? I mean patent people gathering is like dictatorship with an owner and price
They aren't trying to patent gathering, Sony wants to patent the promotion of gatherings through electronic means. The hope would be to use enough jargon slip it through the patent office, at least into pending stage, so they can issue scary C&D letters whenever they see the potential for competition. While it would never hold up in court, they may be able to shut down some smaller projects of this nature if they cannot support the legal fees to defend themselves. They would not, for instance, try to go after Activisim-Blizzard, who would likely own Sony after they counter-sue.
I wonder if photos from mid-90's MUD gatherings qualify as prior art.
Blizzcon, Call of Duty and the EVE Online gathering would have something to say about prior art. Not to mention the hundreds of T-Shirts I have from LAN parties.
__________________ Everything is true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live.
So they're trying to patent digital marketing of real life events? Or they're trying to patent free assembly? ... someone's getting kicked out of E3 this year.
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Hard to believe this company who has lost BILLIONS of dollars think they can get away with something so ridiculous. I'm starting to think Sony is in a unstoppable death spiral. They have failed in most everything they have done with the PS3, and I'm so glad I never bought one.
They may have lost money, but you do understand that the PS3 has probably outsold the Xbox 360 this generation don't you?
Once you take into account all the failed 360's that had to be replaced, Sony probably has far more working units in households than Microsoft does. It would be a guess, but I would think Sony is 25% higher than MS in actual working units that are in households. (Given that 100% of all the old "fat" Xbox 360's will fail at some point in their first year.)
__________________ Everything is true. God's an Astronaut. Oz is Over the Rainbow, and Midian is where the monsters live.
