Nintendo granted "handheld software emulation" pat

[Guest bosshogg]

Haven't seen this mentioned on the forum so far:

Nintendo has successfully patented the emulation in software of handheld gaming devices, and the company has already begun challenging emulator developers to cough up royalties.

and

The filing outlines a "software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform on a low-capability target platform (eg. a seat-back display for airline or train use, a personal digital assistant, a cell phone)".

Read the full story at The Register

[Guest Gorskar]

Yup, noticed that... (and popped it on www.smartgamer.org)

I Suspect that those of us on this side of the pond will be largely unaffected, as the lunatics in the US Patent office have no juristiction here... it would have to pass the far more stringent prerequisites of patentability that European countrys require before it got to be universal. (I.E. no-one can have done it before for starters... )

Even those in the US shouldnt worry too much, as most of the emulators are developed and hosted here.

[Guest spacemonkey]

Can't wait for a gnuboy Smartphone cease and desist letter :)

[Guest midnight]

they are applying for international patent, do not think its just for the US, and Nintendo would not have applied for the patent if they did not intend on shutting down/fining gameboy emulator creators, as it says, theyve already started challenging people, this isnt an idle threat, and seems to me its come before sony launch the PSP. Can you imagine a gameboy/gba emulator on psp? that would kill off nintendo

[Guest Gorskar]

International Patent? Who decides on those? Surely not the American Patent office!

I see I still have much to learn about Patents...

Given that Gameboy emulators have been available on PocketPCs for years and years I hardly see that this is an idea that can be patented.

And anther point is the wording..."low capability target platform"

I think most of us would agree that while your bog standard Nokia might be describable as such, any platform such as a smartphone or pocketPC which is capable of running such an emulator is hardly "low capability".

And on the PSP... surely it would be a closed platform, so even though it was powerful enough to run emulators it wouldnt be able to without hacking it... not something the 99.5% or people who buy them are going to do, so unlikely to bring the end of Nintendo I'd have thought

Oh and one thing. Surely the seatback monitors in planes are liscenced from Nintendo anyway.

[Guest midnight]

its Nintendo protecting their devices, why would anyone want a gameboy when you can emulate it on another mobile device?

Nintendo have applied for inteernational copyright, and yes it can be done via us patent office (indirectly), the first stage of this was granting US patent (that has happened), the next stage is international patent (takes longer to get).

'Given that Gameboy emulators have been available on PocketPCs for years and years I hardly see that this is an idea that can be patented. '

It HAS happened it has been granted US patent, and they WILL be granted International patent. This isnt just on a whim, Nintendo have been after this for years, they started by shutting down rom sites, now they are after the emulator makers. To be honest i dont blame em, it isnt like they are emulating a system that is now not sold/defunkt or whatever, the gameboy is still being sold to this day, and emulators do directly affect sales, downloading roms is theft. And now Nintendo has patented gameboy emulation, emulator makers will either have to cease making/distributing their emulators and/or pay nintendo a fee.

[Guest Gorskar]

It HAS happened it has been granted US patent, and they WILL be granted International patent.

But given that the US patent office has approved broad patents such as "searching for a website on the internet" (it was something like that but not exactly that, cant remember precisely) where there are CLEAR prior examples of it happening I hardly think their judgement can be applied to the international community. (intellectually, not necessarily legally - I don't pretend to be a lawyer)

And no I dont approve of piracy (be very clear on that), but there are a fair few freeware ROMs available, theres been a couple such sites posted on modaco (I'm sure a search will turn them up.)

Nintendo has a right to go after commercial ROM sites, they are very unlikely to be legal. Emulators however are legal. (or have been up untill now anyway :? )

Also re Nintendo protecting its devices: I dont see the PSP emulating gameboy games as it will be closed. It would need to be hacked to allow that sort of thing. PocketPCs and Smartphones are niche market products, not mass really competitive with gameboys and the like.

I understand what they are trying to do though...

And what about the other point that the patent covers "low capability" devices? Would you call a Smartphone "Low capability"?

[Guest spacemonkey]

For all that they mention Mobile Phones in their patent, Nintendos main target is going to be devices like the GP32 that are directly trying to be an equivalent of a gameboy/gameboy advance and using emulation to achieve it.

Nintendo have sensible business reasons for what they are doing and it will be interesting to see what happens. In the case of emulators there is no copyright issues, so the only attack Nintendo have is this patent.

Now patent law. It is not the strongest law for this kind of scenario. There is definite prior art, and additionally their patent is so broad as to be laughable. The real issue however is that for someone to defeat their patent they would need to spend a lot of money on lawyers and lobbying so this could well end up as another case where a weak law provides protection for a large company because they have enough money.

We'll just have to watch it and see what happens. From my own stand point, if I get a legal instruction to cease distributing gnuboy, beyond confirming that the instruction is legitimate I will cease distribution without a fight. I never ported it to get into a fight regardless of what I believe, so I'll be sad to see it go, but I won't be the one to fight nintendo.

However, I would urge anyone who is interested to take a copy of the code and executables for gnuboy, and if/when it gets shutdown, put up your own gnuboy site. You wouldn't be breaking the law, it's GPL so you can distribute it. When Nintendo tells you to stop distributing take the site down. That's it... we could waste their time for years.

[Guest midnight]

erm, you do actually realise that emulators are actually illegal because it infringes on intellectual property rights? most emulators simulate old games or game systems that are no longer sole, and although they are illegal developers havent bothered to clamp down on anyone. but for new-ish game systems they have, Sony have sued the makers of virtual gamestation (Connectix), and Nintendo themselves where about to sue the makers of UltraHLE until they actually stopped working on it.

[Guest spacemonkey]

Not quite, legitimate reverse engineering is not illegal. The illegal emulators are those that breach copyright by containing rom images from the emulated device. If there are no roms then there is no copyright issue.

In the case of the gameboy the emulator is emulating a bunch of well known hardware with open instruction sets and there is nothing illegal about it (until this patent issue came up)

In the case of emulators like Pocket Clive, the emulator is 100% legal, but before you even look at games you need a set of spectrum ROM images that effectively contain the operating system of a ZX Spectrum. Luckily in the case of the ZX Spectrum these ROM images have been released into the public domain.

Emulators such as playstation emulators have all been taken to court on the basis of either a) breach of copyright since they contain copied ROM code or :) DMCA since they reverse engineer copy protection measures

Modern game consoles are not being defended more vigourously because it's fashionable and no one cares about old systems, modern systems are more complicated which makes emulation without breaching either copyright or DMCA basically impossible.

erm, you do actually realise that emulators are actually illegal because it infringes on intellectual property rights? most emulators simulate old games or game systems that are no longer sole, and although they are illegal developers havent bothered to clamp down on anyone. but for new-ish game systems they have, Sony have sued the makers of virtual gamestation (Connectix), and Nintendo themselves where about to sue the makers of UltraHLE until they actually stopped working on it.

PS. I can't believe I'm getting into an argument with midnight again :roll:

[Guest Gorskar]

Yea, I'd agree with that... general consensus is that Emulators ARE legal but copyright protected ROMs are not.

Dunno whether Nintendo is

a)Interested in emulators on smartphones (as opposed to things like the GP32) or

b)Able to enforce them with such a badly worded, yet overbroad, wrongly granted (prior art) Patent. (Sadly not many smalltime developers would want to take on Nintendo even with the law on their side, and I wouldnt blame them either... Nintendo has all the money)

For an example of Prior art see This Gameboy emulator on the Palm available on 6/26/00

Patent claim filed by Nintendo in November 00

(Notice which was earlier :) )

[Guest midnight]

PS. I can't believe I'm getting into an argument with midnight again  :roll:

it isnt an argument its a debate, thats what forums are for :)

either way, nintendo has filed for (and got) the patent, and they can (and have) started clamping down on emulator creators (they have filed against at least 2 emulators so far, both being on the tapwave zodiac), i'm more concerned for the creators of the emulators, the last thing i wanna see is you get in trouble thats all :lol:

[Guest Gorskar]

I think the worst thats likely to happen is a cease and desist letter which (assuming the developer complies) is the end of it from their point of view.

Like spacemonkey says it might take them a long time to get it off the internet altogether as they will have to find every site that is mirroring it and send them a cease and desist too. (and remember there is nothing Illegal about emulators... just no-one here is likely to have the muscle to stand up to Nintendo's very weak (and possible invalid) Patent)

All this is assuming that they even care about Smartphones... I suspect the GP32 and similar is what is foremost in their minds... (but we'll have to wait and see I spose)

[Guest spacemonkey]

I think they will primarily be going after Gameboy Advance emulators. But if they find the patent to be successful in shutting sites down then they'll just get a lawyer to mail them out in bulk.