Basically SEGA patented touch-based soccer games and is now trying to halt the sales and dispose of all Inazuma Eleven games and get 900 million yen in damages. Image that was included with the patent: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=503636
At this point between this and Shining I'm actually wondering if Sega have given up and are resorting to simply trolling people while they still can.
This is really bad. It seems SEGA of Japan is being hijacked by lawyers. I fear the worst for that company.
This. That said, I completely doubt this is foreshadowing a sudden but inevitable betrayal or something. Keep your heads. They know what we do is for the love of what they do.
A) Sega's legal team is well aware of Retro and has been for years. B) I would wager that not a single person who posted above me actually looked at the patent.
Probably because what the patent actually covers is fairly irrelevant if you are against the idea of software patents altogether.
Not really, no. The entire world of software is based off of iterative progress and using other people's work. If you want to 'build it yourself' as it were, you have to start from scratch and always wind up doing more work than is necessary. Trying to patent a piece of software just sets everyone else back, and stifles innovation.
It's a very educated position to take, especially when you've witnessed the way they are used for little more than engaging in anti-competitive behavior and the way they cause grief for the open source community. Why? Just because of the immature notion of, "No I thought of it first! It's MY idea!" Give me a break. There is no good reason the hard work of a company making a similar product shouldn't be allowed to be rewarded by consumers if they do the same exact thing better.
This is similar to saying "Letters I receive are irrelevant because I am against the postal system". Just because you don't like something doesn't always necessarily make the details unimportant.
It is similar to that, but that is perfectly fine. If I'm arguing that I believe the postal system is bad, then what do the letters I receive have anything to do with it? Similarly, if he's arguing that ANY software patent is a bad idea, what does it matter that he has to read SEGA's patent?
To read what the patent is actually fully describing for a start, other than a brief description. Can't really discuss a particular patent (whether you see all software patents as bad or not) if you don't read the specifics of it. If it was discussion about Software Patents in general, fair enough. You could say all electric bills are bad. But you don't know how bad that particular one is unless you actually read it. Sure in that particular situations there's serious consequences of NOT reading into the details, but it's a similar point.
Software patents may be bull, but if you've got the patent, you've got to defend it. I've seen a couple of screenshots of Inazuma Eleven in that NeoGAF thread...the violations look pretty clear.
I think the controls in the Wii versions of Pro Evolution Soccer are pretty much the same, only replacing "touch" with "point at"... This really makes no sense.