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Message: <blockquote data-quote="woodelf" data-source="post: 1684476" data-attributes="member: 10201">And how many would have merited it? The fact that M:tG has mechanisms that require indicating whether an "in-play" card is "in effect" is certainly novel, as is the random distribution, and having the rules encapsulated on the cards themselves. But that doesn't make the specific "technique" of rotating the card 90deg a meaningful innovation, if it is an innovation at all. Would you consider it sufficiently innovative for patent protection if, instead, the player had two rows of cards in front of her, and moved cards from the near row to the far row when tapping them? I contend that "tapping" wasn't used in previous games not because it wasn't thought of or couldn't have been thought of, but because the card games in question had no mechanical elements that could take advantage of such a feature.Or it shows that the idea is semi-obvious. For all we know, it was first thought of 50yrs ago, but it never occurred to the "inventor" that it was sufficiently novel to merit recognition, much less patenting. The fact that it's never been patented before could indicate it's never been thought of--but it could also indicate it lacks merit.Actually, there were a number of problems that stopped the game--i'm not sure lack of perseverence is really a fair assessment. It was never resolved satisfactorily how basic gameplay would go, such as whether it would involve playing cards, or manipulating already-laid-out cards, or what--it might have even not involved cards. Other projects were deemed more important. And then the game company dissolved, and some friendships along with it, leaving any question of "ownership" of the work thus far up in the air. But that's not important. Anyway, you're right about independent invention in a narrow timeframe sometimes meaning something. Nonetheless, in this case, i stand by my claim that the tapping element is not sufficiently innovative to merit patent protection. Even if nobody had ever thought of it, and it was genuinely a new idea, i still don't consider it sufficiently novel to matter. Some things are just too insignificant, or insufficiently clear-cut, to be worthy of a patent. To make an analogy, let's say that everybody tied their shoes with the make-two-bows-and-knot-them technique because that was all that was known, and someone figured out the rabbit-goes-around-the-tree-and-into-the-hole technique. I don't think it deserves a patent, because it's just not original enough. That's about where i'm at on tapping: just because it is legitimately novel doesn't make it significant. Turning a card to indicate its effect on play is too insignificant of an innovation to merit patenting, IMHO. Period.Hmm...let me try a better analogy. Should Sandy Petersen and Greg Stafford have a patent on the concept of rolling a number of dice equal to your attribute, and adding them up to get the result? Even assuming there were never any RPGs, or even games, that did that before, is it *really* sufficiently original to merit patent protection? Patent the entire Ghostbusters game engine, as a whole? Maybe. But one little piece, in isolation? It just seems ridiculous. Especially when it's not a technique or method, but rather just a surface expression. "Tapping" a card in M:tG doesn't actually *do* anything--it's merely a method of indicating that something is being done (which is actually governed by the rules of the game, as printed on the cards). You could achieve exactly the same effect by shuffling cards from one side to the other (tapped cards on the left, untapped on the right), or having two rows, or putting poker chips on them, or any of a hundred other possibilities.  Just as "one-click shopping" isn't actually a technique or method, it's just the interface for the customer. There are at least 3 different underlying techniques (algorithms) that could be employed, and at least as many different methods as there are programming languages. It's patenting the big red off button on the drill press, rather than the cleverly-designed control panel that leaves the off button raised and exposed and the on button recessed and protected.</blockquote>

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