I want to honor the patents of others, but I know my library hasn't got a list and don't know where I could research existing patents so that I don't get sued....
anyone know a good resource on the matter of patents owned about games?
Searching for Gaming Patents... so I don't get sued!
Mon, 06/19/2006 - 01:13
Mon, 06/19/2006 - 01:26
#1
Searching for Gaming Patents... so I don't get sued!
For United States patents you'll find the United States Patent and Trademark Office at http://www.uspto.gov to be the place to start. You can search every patent. Unfortunately it's really hard to figure out if there's an existing patent that covers your idea because (a) there are so very many ways to word an idea and (b) many patents are (unintentionally, I'm sure) "hidden" in the details of a patent that seems unrelated.
Otherwise you'll likely want a patent attorney who has a staff that will do the same thing but with much more experience behind them and a certain level of semi-guarantee that the patent does or does not already exist.
-- Matthew
Mon, 06/19/2006 - 08:11
#3
Searching for Gaming Patents... so I don't get sued!
My new favorite website for patent seraching is
PatentReader.com.
Unlike the USPTO, which keeps images in a version of TIFF only Macs can read (and therefore crashes any browser running on windows), it coverts all of the images to a readable .pdf file.
The downside is that it runs a bit slow.
Thanks.... my guess is there is a patent lawyer making books or databases that are more specific to each field, but I do not know of any.... if anyone knows of such existing media sources that are in the field of games, please let me know!