> I doubt that's rigorous enough, but I had fun writing it and it makes my
>point I believe.
Glad you can't patent this is real life. Substituting "player" for
"player sprite", you described "jumping for joy while on a platform
assuming gravity is pulling the player towards the platform in question".
I don't think you could reach the state when describing platform games
where you'd've accurately described something that could be patented (or
else Activision is due a lot of money (or whoever made the first
"platform" game)). The scary part is that this is the sort of
nit-picking that people are doing in our courts about these same matters!
;)
>> The premise of Tetris cannot be described so broadly as to include
>> Columns and still give someone who'd seen neither game an clear idea of
>> what Tetris is like.
>
> Sure it can. Relevant terminology would be "block-location grid",
>"active block-entity", and so on. All depends on the original wording
>actually used, of course.
Well, we'll have to agree to disagree on this one.
The operative words were "clear idea". My point is that when you start
using such terminology, you've painted such a broad scope that there's
little that doesn't fit into your description. In this case, just
looking at the words you've thrown out, Breakout and Tetris could fall
under the same look and feel. There's a point where the words are so
broad they don't have any concrete meaning, and I think you'd have to do
that to include Columns in with Tetris. Unfortunately, the courts have
to ultimately draw the line in the sand. Nothing exists (boy I hate
using this phrase) *a priori*.
Does anyone know the meaning of the word "is"? (For non-USA-ers, that's
part of the big stink over President Billy Bubba Boy Clinton's testimony.
For a while, he's debating with the lawyers what "is" means in certain
contexts. C'est la vie, n'est-pas?)
Ruffin Bailey | Write Atari 2600 games on your PPC Mac!
rufbo at bellsouth.net | http://members.aol.com/mactari
--
Archives (includes files) at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/archives/
Unsub & more at http://www.biglist.com/lists/stella/
