Re: [NTLK] Nintendo Patent and Newtendo?

From: Peter H. Coffin (hellsop_at_ninehells.com)
Date: Fri Mar 12 2004 - 08:49:50 PST


On Fri, Mar 12, 2004 at 06:08:44PM +0200, Eckhart Köppen wrote:
> On Fri, 12 Mar 2004 10:02:14 -0500, Eagan Rackley wrote:
> > Do you guys think that this patent relates to Newtendo?
>
> I think the whole situation depends a bit on how well potential scare
> tactics would work here. It is not uncommon for the patent/rights
> holder to threaten legal action, knowing that the other person doesn't
> have the legal resources to research and answer properly. The letter
> from Nintendo looked actually quite tame in that respect.
>
> Fundamentally, I think their patent does not apply since it refers to
> some specific methods of dynamically switching the emulation method
> depending on the game or target platform to be emulated. Another issue
> which comes up more and more is a patented copy protection scheme. Even
> though reverse engineering would be no problem, the solution built with
> the knowledge from reverse engineering would infringe patents. An
> example would be a patented encryption algorithm. But this does not
> seem to apply here either.

One thing that The Register noted[1] was that the patent looked to them
like it specifically covered emulation of handheld game devices, and not
console systems. "Interestingly, emulators targeting Nintendo's
GameCube - ie. of non-handheld devices - are not covered by the patent."

[1] .. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/68/36218.html

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