EA has made 23 accessibility patents available to other developers, by making them open-source. These patents include technologies for photosensitivity and speech recognition.
And open source doesn’t make any sense for patents anyway. Open documentation maybe, but source is a code thing.
That said, patents are already “source available” anyway, and my understanding is that it’s effectively open documentation as well (can they sue for derivative works of their patent? That mask makes no sense…).
But yeah, legally binding non-enforcement pledge is about as close as releasing a patent as public domain as a company like EA is likely to get.
I think its kind of standard for these things but the defensive termination sounds like a trap. If you make a claim about an unrelated patent against “EA, their partners or affiliates” then they revoke your access to the pledge.
I’m not sure how partner or affiliate is defined in this context but EA have business dealings with a lot of companies…
It absolutely is. I’m not sure how that works if EA is the instigating the patent dispute though. If they’re still legally bound to honor the pledge, I think smaller devs are okay, so this would only really apply to other large studios with a bunch of patents of their own.
That said, software patents shouldn’t exist, that’s the realm of copyright and trademark law…
And open source doesn’t make any sense for patents anyway. Open documentation maybe, but source is a code thing.
That said, patents are already “source available” anyway, and my understanding is that it’s effectively open documentation as well (can they sue for derivative works of their patent? That mask makes no sense…).
But yeah, legally binding non-enforcement pledge is about as close as releasing a patent as public domain as a company like EA is likely to get.
I think its kind of standard for these things but the defensive termination sounds like a trap. If you make a claim about an unrelated patent against “EA, their partners or affiliates” then they revoke your access to the pledge.
I’m not sure how partner or affiliate is defined in this context but EA have business dealings with a lot of companies…
It absolutely is. I’m not sure how that works if EA is the instigating the patent dispute though. If they’re still legally bound to honor the pledge, I think smaller devs are okay, so this would only really apply to other large studios with a bunch of patents of their own.
That said, software patents shouldn’t exist, that’s the realm of copyright and trademark law…