[game_preservation] Kickstarting the IGDA Preservation SIG

[Greg B]

Kieron and group,
 To answer the question about IP attacks being something that big companies
worry about. There is a very interesting point here. Actually big companies
with a lot of money have to worry less. They have the money to fund IP
litigations and settle/win them. They have the resources to employ people to
dig up this code. It would make it much easier and cheaper for everyone if
the code was archived. I would argue that the real benefit is for companies
that do not have a lot of resources. You can look around at patent cases
pending in the US right now (some of which I am working on and cannot
comment about). The companies that are really suffering under these are
smaller publishers and just about any development company. If you are
Monster Publisher, you can pay X million dollars to litigate and win or
settle a case. If you are the small guy, it would be a real boon to pull
that source code out of a cheaply available archive. In short, I think
source code archiving benefits all the people in the industry and actually
benefits smaller companies more. Sadly, no one is immune to IP litigation.
 I wrote an article touching on this for Game Developer in the last year if
anyone wants to look that up for an expanded discussion.
 Greg

 On 10/24/05, Kieron Wilkinson <preservation_sig at igda.org> wrote:

>

> Hi Greg,

>

> I totally agree that source code preservation is important, I have

> spoken to the guys at Remain In Play (www.remaininplay.com<http://www.remaininplay.com>)

> who are

> indeed doing that already, and I think (please correct me if I am wrong

> Andreas) that DiGA (www.digitalgamearchive.org<http://www.digitalgamearchive.org>)

> is interested in this also.

>

> I had actually not considered IP attacks being motivation for not

> releasing source code. Is more likely something for large companies with

> large IP portfolios (and large amounts of cash) to worry about? With the

> crazyness that appears to be happening in the IP world at the moment, I

> can see their point, not that I agree with it!

>

> --

> Kieron Wilkinson

> Preservation SIG

> International Game Developers Association

>

>

> Greg B wrote:

> > Kieron and group,

> >

> > I would also like to chime in on the more difficult, but still important

> > task of preserving source code for these games, where available. I know

> > that Simon and some others know that I do game IP law full time. One of

> > the most important legal pieces for defending against a patent case in

> > the game context is having the date-stamped source code for a piece of

> > prior art. Finding a playable game with preserved date-stamped source

> > code is often a type of Holy Grail to help defend a against patent case.

> >

> > Having said all of that, I do want to stress "where available." I'm

> > sure some people are still holding on the that 1987 source code just

> > waiting to make millions on the re-release of the game, but that code is

> > probably worth far more to the publishing/development community archived

> > for historic purposes and for the selfish purpose of defending against

> > IP attacks.

> >

> > Greg

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