Preservation Key For Current Games and IP Rights

I just wanted to add another reason for the preservation of games. I agree with all the more commonly described motivations, but I want to write about one that might be a little more motivating to current game companies.

In short, game preservation is critical to prevent modern game companies from losing money in IP litigations.

Let me give an example of this from the patent perspective.

Innovator Game Company (I) creates fabulous new game invention/technology and does not patent it.

Rip Off Game Company (RO) comes along a little later, and fools the US Patent Office into giving them a patent on the technology.

Now we wait a few years, maybe 8 or 10. RO may even go out of business and the patent is bought and sold a few times, but for the sake of this argument let's say that RO is still around.

Now I's game technology is used by many companies in many multimillion dollar games. We will call the other game companies A, B, and C.

RO now brings his patent into court and sues A, B, and C. RO makes the following argument. I see you are using my patented technology. Why don't you pay me a license fee like 10% of your gross receipts? In the alternative, you can pay 2-3 million to litigate this case over 3 years. You might win, you might not. I don’t care because I have my contingency fee lawyers sitting beside me that I don’t really have to pay much unless we get some money out of this.

This brings me to my initial point. The preservation of game technology, including running versions of old games and complete game code is critical to invalidate RO’s patent and keep him from doing this. Furthermore, if it is well known that public game preservation is widely practiced, it will keep some RO’s off the playing field before they even start trying to shop around a license on the bogus patent.

Greg