PATENTS
Pending resolution
The demise of Monolith Productions highlights a rising threat – both real and imagined – of gameplay patents
Monolith Productions is no more, but the studio’s legacy is set to shape the industry long after its HQ is cleared, albeit not for the reason any of its staff might have wanted. The Nemesis system is perhaps Monolith’s single biggest contribution to games, presenting a way of tracking enemy NPCs who survive a fight with the player or even defeat them, so that they can return later on with a promotion, new abilities and dialogue referencing the previous encounter.
The concept debuted in 2014’s Middle-earth: Shadow Of Mordor, and was planned to return in the now-cancelled Wonder Woman game. But we shouldn’t, it seems, expect to see its like again any time soon, since the Nemesis system is protected by a patent that will last long into the future, preventing its use in any other production until at least 2036. Parent company Warner Bros was granted a new continuation as recently as January, and has another pending approval by the US patent office.
This means that Nemesis joins an unloved list of pure gameplay patents (as distinct from more common IP and copyright restrictions) that have loomed over the game industry, largely unnoticed, for the past 30 years. Previous notable examples of the form include minigames in loading screens (originating in 1996’s Ridge Racer and expiring in 2015), “ghost cars” in racing games (Hard Drivin’, expired in 2020) and games based on rolling things into a ball (Katamari Damacy, expires in 2026).
CLAIM ASSIST
While it’s easy to dwell on the headline assertion of a patent, the room for creativity lies farther into the document. “A lot of times people will look at the drawings in the patent or the opening description and say, ‘I can’t believe they patented this – I’ve been doing this forever’,” Scott Kelly says. “But what really matters are the claims at the end. That’s where they define a grocery list of ‘you need to do all of these things to infringe my patent’. You can’t infringe the patent if there’s something in the claim that you’re not doing.”
When you’re dealing in such fuzzy concepts, though, how is it decided which parts of a game can and cannot be patented? To answer such questions, we need legal experts, although our correspondents won’t provide actual legal advice, only commentary. It’s also worth noting that patent law is a specialist subject and varies by territory, so getting definitive judgements is hard. There is, however, a clear theme in our conversations with legal professionals: that the Nemesis patent is unusual for being granted in the first place.