There’s an essay @ Gamasutra about gameplay patents[^] by Ernest Adams. Well worth the read!

I agree on the points he make, the US patent-system just don’t work as it is today.. It restricts freedom of creativity which in my opinion is synonymous with restricting creativity. Cause there can’t be any *real* creativity without freedom!

Imagine if everyone and their cat patented all the innovative parts of their game…. On one side, it would demand innovation in games, no matter what! On the other side, it would kill all indie-developers, since only the big companies would be able to afford the extra cost from using someone else’s patent.
Or it would kill all innovation whatsoever! Cause all the big companies would patent their innovations and stick to them, never straying from the patented path. It would be even worse than it is today…

I’m glad it isn’t like this though, and I sure hope they will remove the possibility to patent gameplay in the future.

Oh, and don’t forget programming code!! As Ernest points out, if the creators of all the sorting algorithms that we programmers use today, had patented them.. There would be no effective programming. I shudder at the mere thought…

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