Patent Arcade

(Last Updated September 4, 2007)

Welcome to the second primary feature of Patent Arcade:


We will endeavor to track and inform our readers regarding United States Patents (and various interesting foreign patents) directed to video games. Yes, we realize that there are endless patents that could be applied to video games if you squint your eyes and look through frosted glass, but we are going to concentrate on patents that are squarely directed (ok, mostly square) to game play methods and interesting aspects of video games. Examples of things we will NOT comment on include graphics rendering techniques, audio/video compression, hardware (most of the time), and other behind-the-scenes aspects of video games. That having been said, here is our initial list of video game pantents, which we will continually update and elaborate on.

Click on a link to read more about a patent. We'll get to them all eventually.

• U.S. Pat. No. 5,482,289, entitled "Method of Playing a BINGO Game with Progressive Jackpot"
• U.S. Pat. No. 5,727,786, entitled "Bingo Game Method"
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,200,138, entitled “Game display method, moving direction indicating method, game apparatus and drive simulating apparatus,” and assigned to Sega Enterprises, Ltd.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,261,179, entitled "Video Game System and Video Game Memory Medium," and assigned to Nintendo. (Level Chooser)
• United States Patent 6488505, entitled "Vehicle competition with enhanced ghosting features," assigned to Midway Games West Inc."
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,522,333, entitled "Remote Communication Through Visual Representation," issued February 18, 2003, and assigned to Electronic Arts.
  
• United States Patent No. 6,604,008 to Chudley et al., issued August 5, 2003, entitled “Scoring based on goals achieved and subjective elements,” and assigned to Microsoft Corp.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,669,564, entitled "Episodic Delivery of Content," issued December 30, 2003, to Electronic Arts.
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,695,694, entitled “Game machine, game device, control method, information storage medium, game distribution device and game distribution method,” and assigned to Konami Corporation.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,712,702, entitled " Method and system for playing games on a network," and assigned to Beneficial Innovations, Inc. (involved in litigation)
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,722,989, entitled "Virtual Pet Game...," and assigned to Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc.
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,729,954, entitled “Battle method with attack power based on character group density,” and assigned to Koei Co., Ltd.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,733,383, entitled "Systems and Methods for Simulating Game State Changes Responsive to an Interrupt Condition," and assigned to Electronic Arts.
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,752,718, entitled "Role Playing Video Game Using Cards," and assigned to Square Enix.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,764,402 entitled "Image-Display Game System And Information Storage Medium Used Therefor," and assigned to Nintendo for its Pokemon game.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,805,632 entitled "Video Slot Gaming Machine," and assigned to Konami Gaming, Inc.
  
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,923,717 to Mayer et al., issued August 2, 2005, entitled "Adrenaline Feature For Sports Video Games," and assigned to Nintendo of America, Inc.
• U.S. Pat. No. 6,935,954 to Sterchi et al., issued August 30, 2005, entitled "Sanity System for Video Game," and assigned to Nintendo of America, Inc.
• U.S. Pat. No. 7,201,374, to Bielman, issued April 10, 2007, entitled "Method and article of manufacture for collectible game," and assigned to Wizards of the Coast.
  

If you know of any patents that should be included on this list, please let us know!

Labels: Features, Patents

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14, 2006 at 7:43 AM.