Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

rodinhood.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 53 posts

Re: Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

#11

Post by sushrutbidwai »

gaius wrote: post #9
_delirium wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The embed-ads-that-travel-with-the-game solution is fairly well known among casual-games developers I think. That doesn't make it a bad idea, but I'd be surprised if it's really patentable, unless the "invisibility" they discuss is particularly novel. I'm not exactly sure what they mean by that part, so hard to say. Here's a CNET article from 2007 touting the benefits of ads embedded in flash games, one of which is "…

I think they mean the ads only appear if the animation detects that it's been served from a website other than the original. I don't think this is especially novel; not for ads but I remember writing code back in the 90s for Java applets to check that they were being served only from the original website.

Originality of solution is not in developing a technology (though getting patent for that might mean it is), but identifying a key problem in business and using technology in an innovative way to solve the problem.

Re: Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

#12

Post by Ygor »

"if Virgin Music and EMI etc., would have bought Napster (instead of suing it and closing it down) and then converted the site into their official mp3 website, iTunes would have been a me-too and not the gorilla it is today"

This part is interesting. Not so because of the concrete actors mentioned, but overall. It raises the question about the way the whole film/game/music industry battles piracy. Do You think they too could have found a better way, making it all to their benefit (and profit). Or have they done that already?

Re: Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

#14

Post by rodinhood »

@all - Quick points to clarify - my partner and I have 'filed' for patent but not received it yet. The concept is not unique in itself - the auto switch from visible to invisible is. As a fully funded VC company, any patent is value creating - the intention is obviously to use the patent tag to then seriously license the solution to folks like Viacom etc.

Re: Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

#16

Post by gaius »

sushrutbidwai wrote: post #11
gaius wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they mean the ads only appear if the animation detects that it's been served from a website other than the original. I don't think this is especially novel; not for ads but I remember writing code back in the 90s for Java applets to check that they were being served only from the original website.

Originality of solution is not in developing a technology (though getting patent for that might mean it is), but identifying a key problem in business and using technology in an innovative way to solve the problem.

Agreed. Doesn't mean it's patentable tho'.

Re: Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

#17

Post by disguisedcoder »

rodinhood wrote: post #14

@all - Quick points to clarify - my partner and I have 'filed' for patent but not received it yet. The concept is not unique in itself - the auto switch from visible to invisible is. As a fully funded VC company, any patent is value creating - the intention is obviously to use the patent tag to then seriously license the solution to folks like Viacom etc.

if (HOST != MYSERVER) { show_ad(); } This is silly.

I congratulate you for writing an interesting blog post and I can understand that one would like to obtain a monopoly if he's found a working business model, yet I consider such a practice to be highly unethical.

You are right in thinking that you deserve to reap the benefits after you've found a solution to that problem. You truly do. But you're wrong in drawing the conclusion that you've somehow acquired the right to shut out your competition.

Software patents are a sham(e).

Re: Have you partnered with thieves and robbers?

#20

Post by motters »

exit wrote: post #4

i was on their side until the bit about patenting this. but what does their patent mean? if i deploy this solution for my own games, or make a business deploying it for others, will they come after me?

Agree. Software algorithms should not be patentable.
Post reply on HN