🚀 go-pugleaf

>You can get patents on board games; I know of some people who did.  I
>assume that most board-game patents are like theirs, "A patent on the
>method of moving playing pieces... blah, blah, blah" or something to that
>effect.  I'd heard that getting a patent was expensive (for lawyers and
>patent searches), but I don't think they had huge resources (they just sell
>the game mail-order, and they still have day jobs) so maybe it's not as bad
>as I've heard.
>
>        -- Jim

Well, I talked to a friend who is a patent lawyer about a patent I was trying
to get and he said I'd be looking at $4k or so, mainly for searches and other
lawyer fees. I am patenting a telephone device so I'm not sure of searches
for board games etc but I think it'd be around the same general price range.

P.S. it also took a long time.. I was told it could be up to 2 years before I
actually had it officially patented. As soon as I actually asked my lawyer to
start the process I was entitled to put 'patent pending' on it but he said
that patent pending means absolutely nothing. The only good it can have is
scare people away, they could pay a few thousand to engineer a copy and not
get any rights because the patent just came through..  This is different with
a board game (nothing to reverse engineer or anything) but you can (c) the
rules and the board etc.. and then they can't just copy it...
(much more useful than 'patent pending')

--

Clayten_Hamacher@Mindlink.bc.ca                 Land of the rising snow.