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Plaupius on 30 October 2008
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bardicverse said:
Plaupius said:
bardicverse said:
I find the patent suspicious, only because most of Sony's R&D is done in Japan. It wouldn't make sense for the patent to be registered stateside.

Beyond that, video/camera tracking.... I dunno, leaves a bad taste in my mouth. Big brother is watching always.

The patent is the real deal. Each country has their own patent offices, and you have to file a patent in each country you want to protect your innovation in. As it happens, USA is the biggest market in the world for nearly everything, so most patents are filed also in USA. Though, the inventor's address is in USA, so it seems that Sony does R&D in many places.

 

Im not so sure on the accuracy of that. Most if not all Nintendo patents occur in Japan, but hold equal weight oversees via the ITC

You are both right and wrong, I was too hasty in my writing it seems. According to Wikipedia, patents are territorial by their nature, and patent laws vary from one country to another. There is, however, a Patent Cooperation Treaty, which is an attempt to harmonize patent laws between the contracting states. Most of the developed countries are signatories to the PCT, but a good number of the less developed countries are not. As such, the territorial nature of patents still remains, although a patent filed under the PCT has a far wider coverage than a patent filed under a national patent office. It appears that Taiwan and Argentina, for example, are not signatories of the PCT, so a patent filed under the PCT has no power in either country. Generally, a patent infringement is subject to the laws of the state that granted the patent, and as states can't wield legal power over other states, a Taiwanese company is free to infringe on the patent so long as they do not do business in any of the PCT signatory states. At least that's my understanding, feel free to correct if I'm mistaken.