Patents in gaming usually wind up leading to some of the most recognizable forms of hardware on the market, including the DualShock controller, Xbox’s Kinect, and the Nintendo Switch Joy-Cons, to name a few examples. Patents always need to have an application filed along with them, which brings us to Sony and patents pertaining to the PlayStation platform as of the past 12 years.
VGC brings this to light, revealing comments by a patent expert, Florian Mueller. Florian has been a patent analyst and activist for more than 20 years now and runs the blog Foss Patents. Mueller released a post yesterday that rips into patents Sony has filed since 2011. In reference to a GameRant article from a few days ago (as of the time of publication), Mueller clarifies that this practice has been going on for more than a decade, stating that the practice has been dating as far back as 2011.
For more than a decade, #Sony‘s #patent applications have been disparaging #Microsoft and #Nintendo as ‘inferior manufacturer[s]’ of video game consoles: gratuitous, childish, unprofessionalhttps://t.co/P2ftyIOIC0#PlayStation #Xbox #consolewars
Dozens of examples since 2011.— Florian Mueller (@FOSSpatents) April 9, 2023
Humorously enough, one such case can be seen below, where Sony refers to the competition to PlayStation as a “different albeit inferior manufacturer.” You can view the full 2011 patent this was sourced from here, and the section in question below:
Mueller also commented further, calling Sony’s wording against other companies gratuitous, stupid, childish, and unprofessional. He further added that, even if those manufacturers were inferior, it would not mean that whatever invention a given Sony patent purports to describe is, by definition, innovative and deserving of patent protection.
Given that the FOSS Patents post links, not just this but a dozen more cases of that same phrasing (“different albeit inferior manufacturer”), Sony gives off the impression that Playstation has the high ground and can say whatever it pleases about the competition. Considering how much they have played victim against Microsoft in the Activision Blizzard deal, it certainly is a contrast worth talking about.
Mueller condemns this ideal, saying the following:
If Sony wants to engage in comparative advertising, it can do so elsewhere. Gamers will not make purchasing decisions based on the language Sony uses in its patent applications. If a small company went to the same patent attorneys and wanted them to file patent specifications that contain such an outrageous passage, most patent attorneys would decline to attach their names to it.
Sony, realistically, needs to realize that there’s a time and place for these kinds of comments. A patent application is certainly not one such place, but considering they’ve been doing it for over a decade, it’s unlikely they’ll suddenly change their ways.
