Re: [piecepack] New piecepack components? Dice cards and paper dice

["Mike Schoessow" <mikeschoessow@...>]

>Unfortunately, the Deck of Dice is patented.  If people want to see
>the patent, it is number 5,904,353 at <http://www.uspto.gov>. You can
>also follow this short link:

>  http://snipurl.com/dodpat

>I believe this is a "bad" patent, and that there is prior art -- that
>is, people were using decks of cards and similar devices simulating
>dice rolls for years before Dice Corp. came along and patented the
>idea.  

I have been involved with obtaining patents for my engineering designs at work, and have also had to work with other people's patents, etc. A good friend who was a working (i.e., designing, not managing) engineer (and a good one) decided to obtain a law degree, which he did, after which he became one of the company's patent lawyers. I had a number of enlightening conversations with him, especially regarding what can be patented and what cannot (I mean legally and properly; I'm not refering to patents that may be inappropriately granted due to inadequate searches, etc.). What I learned was quite surprising to me. Before talking to my friend, I could never understand, for example, why a company could patent a common electronic circuit that had been in common use for decades. The answer is that it is perfectly legal to patent a thing that is already in use IF you have found a new application for that thing, and patent it for that application, and IF the application was non-obvious. If the application is very useful and saleable, and no one else had thought of it before, then it is certain to be judged non-obvious. My understanding is that, many if not most patents fall into this class. So, in the case of a "deck of dice", it would probably not be judged a bad patent just because people have used parts of a standard deck of cards to form their own deck of dice. One would probably have to show that an essentially identical product, in terms of number distribution, how it worked according to the included rules, convenience, etc., already was in public use somewhere (either in the public domain and documented as such in literature or newspapers or on recorded video, or being sold by another company), or had been in the past.

There is also a class of patent (can't remember what it's called, but it a particular class of patent. I'm not talking about copyright--this is different) that is not based on design utility, but is instead intended to cover artistic elements. This could also apply to something like a deck of cards.


>This kind of thing happens because the Patent Office is swamped
>with patent applications right now, and rather than spend days or
>weeks on a patent, as they used to, patent examiners right now
>literally spend only a few _hours_ examining each patent, then
>rubber-stamp it.  

Agreed. This is a problem, and with the high costs now for sustaining a patent, the system is skewed toward the large companies.

>The result is a "chilling effect"
><http://www.chillingeffects.org/>.  The piecepack community has
>already felt such a chilling effect with the introduction of
>AlphaTim's piecepack pyramids, which Andrew Looney said infringed on
>his (in my opinion) similarly "bad" Icehouse pyramid patent, without
>his even having seen a set of piecepack pyramids, an issue on which he
>later vacillated.

Yes, I remember that. I haven't read Looney's patent wrapper so I don't know what properties exactly of his pyramids that he is attempting to legally protect. I do know that plastic stackable pyramids are available other places than Looney Labs. For example, Plastics For Games carries them, in two sizes I think. I have obtained samples of these and they ARE different from Looney's pyramids in some ways. They have a higher ration of height to base, they are thin-walled rather than thick-walled (so they aren't as nice for stacking), and they are opaque rather than transparent.  

Assuming Looney's patent would stand up legally if competently challenged (and I'm not saying it would; I don't know), if somebody wanted to make plastic stackble pyramids having all the properties of Looney's pyramids, but optimized for piecepack use in terms of color and markings, they would have to pay royalties to Looney Labs. However, the maker of the these pyramids could obtain a patent of his own, covering the specific properties that make the pyramids useful with piecepack. If anyone else wanted to produce such piecepack pyramids, they would have to pay royalties to both Looney Labs, AND to the designer of the new piecepack pyramids. 

I must state that I have no law degree,  and I am not an expert in these ares. My comments are all just based on my understanding of patents, gleened from my experience as an engineer. I could easily be wrong in anything I've stated. One thing I do know though, is that, just because something is already out there, that doesn't mean it can't be properly patented in some form as long as some new use or application is involved.

-Mike