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Message: <blockquote data-quote="slaughterj" data-source="post: 3995138" data-attributes="member: 5341">Things seem to be shifting during this discussion.  As I recall, the first reference in this thread was something about games not being patentable in Canada (probably due to something about industrial application or some such).  And there was a couple of times in which you have cited Canadian patent law.  And there is use of the terms "games", "game mechanics," and "game rules", which may or may not be being used interchangeably by various posters.  With that in mind, here's a few responses:1.  I reiterate that you are citing to Canadian law, which is not applicable to and is different from U.S. law, so to the extent you continue to rely on it, it is not applicable to ALL that which is patentable.  Games, game mechanics, game rules, or other terms may or may not be barred in Canada and even the rest of the world other the U.S. (e.g., with a stated bar, or due to the requirement for industrial application, or whatnot), but that analysis varies under and does not apply to U.S. law and therefore does not mean that such matters are simply not patentable *somewhere* (in this case, the U.S.).2.  It would probably help if you gave a few examples of what you mean by game *rules*, since that appear to be your focus (as opposed to games in general, game mechanics, etc.).3.  Hopefully you will understand, I am not interested in spending hours searching the U.S. patent database, case law, etc. to prove whether or not a game *rule* specifically can be patented, especially when the terms being used herein are shifting and we are presently lacking specific examples to clarify the situation.  But given your familiarity with the Canadian IP Office, perhaps if you are so interested in this, you could do such a search yourself at uspto.gov.  In an attempt to be helpful though, just brief searches of the terms "game" and "rule" on the USPTO site found patent no. 7316611 ("Method for playing a gambling game") which seems offhand to patent rules to a game (I only took a brief look though) and searching "game rule patent" in Google found patent no. 5497999 ("Method of playing a card game teaching golf rules").  Further searches such as those might reveal that which you seek.4.  As a general matter, unless there is a stated bar to something being patentable, I presumably that anything invented which is new, useful, and non-obvious (i.e., meets the basic criteria of patentability) would be patentable (and even if there is a stated bar, that can even be circumvented under certain circumstances).  So I don't know that I have to *prove* that games rules are patentable in the U.S., but rather the onus would be on the doubter to prove otherwise (e.g., finding statutory or case law to the contrary).  I hope that seems reasonable.</blockquote>

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