February 28, 2025 • 30 mins
In this episode, lawyer Richard Hoeg discusses the recent Warner Brothers studio closures and reflects on the company's history in the video game industry, including Monolith Productions. He focuses on intellectual property issues in gaming, with references to the "No One Lives Forever" series and Monolith's Nemesis System. Richard clarifies different types of intellectual property and common misconceptions, providing legal perspectives on the studio closures and the Nemesis System patent. He explores the future of the Nemesis System, intellectual property licenses, and US Patent and Trademark Office challenges. The episode concludes with Richard's thoughts on the implications of intellectual property in gaming.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Hello, and welcome to Virtual Legality.
I'm your host Richard Hoag, managing member ofthe Hoag Law Business Law Firm of Northville,
Michigan.
And today, unfortunately, we have yet anotherstory in the video game industry of studio
closures, loss of jobs, and in this particularcase, a thorny legal issue that I think has
really caused my social media timeline to takeoff.
(00:35):
So I wanna talk a little bit about that, aboutpatents in video games, because I do see a lot
of information out there from well meaningpeople that is maybe not as 100% accurate as it
could be.
But before we start, let's get into thisparticular story.
As Polygon reports, Warner Brothers closesMonolith Productions and Multiversus Studio and
cancels Wonder Woman game in a big shakeup atWB Games.
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Of course, Warner Brothers games has been thesubject of a number of videos in virtual
reality primarily because they have been goingthrough a shakeup not just in their video game
productions, but in their movies and televisionproductions after their merger with Discovery.
So this is a story that is bad for the peopleaffected.
We don't wanna discount that at all, but it isnot one that we can take as symptomatic of
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larger issues in the video game industry on thewhole necessarily, because this is a very
specific problem for a very specific studio andwe have a lot of history with movie studios and
people that make media in other industries likemovies and television already having issues
producing video games.
We saw this with Disney and their attempts inDisney interactive to make games.
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So this is a bad story for those affected.
I don't see it as a story that is emblematic ofa giant sea change in the production of video
games or in what some folks on my social mediatimelines are calling the predecessors of a
video game crash.
That said, this article says Warner Brothersgames is making big cuts, closing three
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studios, Monolith Productions, Player FirstGames, and WB Games San Diego, and canceling
its long in development Wonder Woman game, thepublisher told employees on Tuesday.
Now, that first game company, MonolithProductions, is the big ticket item here.
They are a video game company, a video gamedeveloper of long standing.
They've been making games for thirty some oddyears, and they've made some of the most
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popular games in history, including mostrecently the the Mordor series, Shadow of
Mordor and Shadow of War in Middle Earth.
And going back a little bit further from that,one of my favorite first person shooters of all
time, No One Lives Forever, which was a JamesBond satire send up, that featured the Kate
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Archer you see pictured here as a spy with kindof goofy Austin Powers sixties British flair,
in a first person shooter environment.
But we are unlikely to see that game ever comeback even with the closure of Monolith as put
forth in a Kotaku article that is one of myfavorite on intellectual property from 2015
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that says, the sad story behind a dead PC gamehere no one lives forever or NOLF that can't
come back.
And in this article, you see some of the issueswith intellectual property licensing overall in
video games.
One of the things that happens when you make avideo game is that you're using intellectual
property for a number of different sourcesincluding music, including programming, and if
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you don't take good care of keeping track ofwhere that intellectual property was sourced
from, you can lose track of who could possiblymake a remaster decades in the future.
So as this article says, the question of whocontrols the NOLF intellectual property has
proved famously difficult to answer and theseries has remained unavailable.
Or as it says a little bit further on, thanksto the ongoing inability and or unwillingness
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of three publishers, Activision, twentiethCentury Fox, and in particular Warner Brothers,
the stars of our show here today, to determinewho owned the game, Nightdive, which you may be
familiar with with some of their other projectsbringing things like The Thing or System Shock
to modern systems, is currently abandoning itsefforts to revive No One Lives Forever.
Now here I do wanna disclaim that I am familiarwith Nightdive.
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I am friends with a number of the people thatwork there, including but not limited to the
reference Larry Cooperman here, who actuallyhelped me start my Twitter account and
realistically helped me start this journey invirtual reality and on YouTube back when he was
in Ann Arbor, Michigan and working with theGame Developers Association.
So I do wanna say that just so that you knowthat in context of this article.
(04:38):
But ultimately, the point is Warner Brothersand intellectual property questions are going
to be at the heart of what we're talking aboutwith respect to this particularly thorny patent
issue and monolith production.
So, let's take a look at that patent issueright now.
Here's another Kotaku article entitled theNemesis System was one of the best things
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gaming ever did, which might be a bit of ahyperbole.
Gaming said a lot of good things, but WarnerBrothers just killed it.
Warner Brothers is shutting down the teamresponsible for one of the most interesting
narrative design mechanics in recent memory.
Now that's an interesting description of whatthe Nemesis system is.
One of the things we will see as part of thisstory is that there aren't a lot of
descriptions that are terribly useful forunderstanding what Nemesis is.
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Part of that is because the patent that wasissued for the Nemesis system was written so
broadly.
It's described here as narrative designmechanics.
The easiest way to think about Nemesis, if youaren't familiar with the Mordor or War games,
is that it is a design parameter within videogames that changes how different NPCs,
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monsters, enemies in Mordor in the case ofthose games react to things that you do as the
avatar, the the player character in thoseenvironments.
And if that sounds too broad to you, well,that's gonna be part of our conversation.
But what I wanted to talk about first is theway that this is described in these various
articles because I understand why you wouldthink this.
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The overall story here is that Warner Brothersgot a patent.
It has the exclusive intellectual propertyrights to this nemesis system that was created
by Monolith.
They closed Monolith over the course of thepast couple of days, and now they are the sole
owners of it, so it's killed.
It's gone, says these articles.
But that's not fully accurate.
That's not how these things work.
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The gamer reports, Warner Brothers will stillown the Nemesis system until 2036 despite
Monolith closure.
I did wanna give credit to this particularheadline because this is accurate.
And a number of people asked me when this newscame out yesterday, what would happen to the
intellectual property?
What would happen to the patent?
Does it go away when they closed the studiothat was responsible for its creation?
No.
Warner Brothers paid for those people to makethis thing.
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As part of that payment, they received anassignment of the patent.
When they filed for the patent, they paid forthat process presumably at the same time.
And so they, Warner Brothers, not Monolith, wasthe holder of the patent.
They continue to be the holder for as long asit is effective in The United States.
As IGN says, after Warner Brothers shut downShadow of Mordor developer Monolith and
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canceled Wonder Woman, fans lament the wastedpotential of its nemesis system.
And I highlight here in the sub headline, it'sgone but not forgotten.
So you see the tenor, the theming of thesearticles is that nemesis must be dead because
monolith is no more.
Or as Eurogamer put it, Shadow of Mordor'sbrilliant nemesis system is locked away by a
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Warner Brothers patent until 2036 despitestudio shutdown as industry reacts to closure.
And in their article, they have a gooddescription of the Nemesis system.
It's a clever in game mechanic, says thisauthor, which tracks a player's actions to
create enemies that feel capable of rememberingpast encounters.
In the studio's Middle Earth games, thisallowed foes to rise through the ranks and
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enact revenge.
The Nemesis system was set to be utilized againin Monolith's Wonder Woman game, though that
project has now been canceled alongside thestudio's sudden closure, Leaving the Nemesis
system seemingly now lying unused and protectedby Warner Brothers due to its successful patent
application.
But one of the things that I wanted to makethis video for was to establish that
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intellectual property is just that.
It's property.
It is something that can be bought and sold.
It can be licensed out.
And one of the reasons that you go and youpatent things like the Nemesis system, if
you're Warner Brothers, is so that you have theability to control its licensure.
Yes.
When you have Monolith and you're making videogames on your own, you might use it for
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comparative advantage.
You might say, we're the only stop that you canget the Nemesis system at.
Don't buy those other games.
You only wanna buy Warner Brothers games.
We have the best recipe for your gaming goodtime.
But if you're not making things with theNemesis system anymore and someone else were
interested in using that Nemesis system, youwanna have a patent if you're Warner Brothers
so that you can have the rights to license itout by contract.
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And so I do think now, more than before, morethan when monolith was working on Wonder Woman,
it is more likely that we are to see thenemesis system actually break from the walls of
Warner Brothers.
If it is of interest to developers out there.
And so let's take a look at what I mean when Italk about intellectual property.
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First, I wanna make sure that we understand thedifferences between these terms because these
get confused a lot.
We're gonna see some confusion in my socialmedia timeline in just a second, but I wanna
explain the differences between trademark,patent, and copyright.
These are the three main areas of intellectualproperty.
A trademark, as described here by the USPTO,the Patent and Trademark Office, is a word,
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phrase, or design that identifies your goods orservices.
Think the words Coca Cola or even the branding,for soft drinks that identifies that this is a
Coca Cola, this comes from the Coca Colacompany.
That's a trademark.
By comparison, a patent is a technicalinvention of some new unique and usable idea in
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a type of industry or as they describe here, anew type of hybrid engine.
And you might say, Rick, you're talking about avideo game concept.
How is that a technical invention of a uniqueand usable type for some industry?
Well, in this particular case, what we'retalking about is really a method patent.
It's a way of doing things.
So you can't patent, you can't copyright, youcan't otherwise protect ideas.
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You protect the execution of those ideas.
You can't protect the notion of the orcs learnabout you and they change how they reference
you as you go through a game.
You can, however, patent the way that you codedit, the way that you had these various
parameters interact, and that is what WarnerBrothers got their patent in even though some I
think rightly think what was issued to WarnerBrothers was probably overbroad.
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That there are ways to challenge it becauseit's covering vast swaths of what would be
gaming interactions of some level of normalcy.
Copyright as our final category is the one wesee most commonly discussed here in virtual
legality because copyright affixes to anycreative work that you create.
The words in the novel that you're writing, thecode in the video game that you're creating,
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the lyrics to a song, the composition of thesong, those get a little bit more complicated
because music has a bunch of different rules,but the USPTO describes this for purposes of
our intellectual understanding as the lyrics toLet It Go from Frozen.
Again, I don't like to use music as the examplehere because there's so many different
copyrights and intellectual propertyprotections that go into any kind of musical
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piece, but that's the difference.
Right?
You've got Coca Cola, the name, the trademark.
In our case, that would be the name nemesis,even though we're not talking about trademarks
here.
The patent, a new type of hybrid engine, or themethod of having other orcs react to the fact
that you killed the first orc in the Mordorgames, from Monolith and Warner Brothers.
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The copyright is the code that you wrote to getit to do that in Shadow of Mordor or Shadow of
War.
Those are the differences between theintellectual property pieces, but people get
them confused all the time including honestlyand a little disgracefully at the Supreme
Court.
But I wanted to highlight this particularTwitter user, Alex Hutchinson, who is a
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developer who puts out some good information onmy social media as someone that gets it wrong
because it's so easy to do.
For anyone who is interested, Warner Brotherscopywriting the nemesis system from the sadly
shuttered monolith means nothing.
You can't copyright mechanics.
You can build something exactly the same.
You just can't call it a nemesis system.
So for analyzing this for purposes of a legalanalysis, we can look at this in sentences.
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For anyone who's interested, Warner Brotherscopywriting the nemesis system is not accurate.
We know that we're talking about patents, notcopyrights.
Then the next sentence is accurate.
Oftentimes when you see these confusions, yousee truth next to lies or at least next to
inaccuracies next to truths, and that makes itall the more complicated.
You can't copyright mechanics.
You can't copyright ideas.
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You can't patent ideas.
You have to only be talking about executionwhen we have this conversation.
And yet, that doesn't lead you to this lastsentence which is you can build something
exactly the same.
You can't.
You just can't call it a nemesis system.
That's talking about trademark.
Right?
So we're using the term copyright in thisparticular statement.
We're talking about it as if it were a patentand then we're referencing it at the end as a
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trademark.
So all of that's inaccurate.
The state of play right now is that WarnerBrothers holds a patent to the way that the
nemesis system operates, not the concept of anemesis system, which is an accurate piece of
this particular puzzle.
But I wanted to highlight that because this isthe kind of stuff you see on social media and I
want people to be careful out there becauseeven top level lawyers in intellectual property
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pursuits get these terms wrong, get the ideaswrong, get the concepts wrong.
This is a particularly complex area of law andso just be careful out there with where you're
getting your information because a lot ofpeople make these mistakes.
The second aspect of this I wanted to talkabout was in a tweet from a synth synth potato.
It said, I absolutely think some law firmshould look into suing Warner Brothers for
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patenting the nemesis system and thenproceeding to shut down Monolith.
Honestly, I don't think there's any kind oflawsuit here.
I'm not looking at this in diligence terms.
I'm not going through their paperwork oranything like that.
But this is a knee jerk reaction that I see alot in video games.
It says this bad thing affects me.
It hurts me.
It harms me.
I don't like it.
Somebody should sue.
This is a very kind of American approach to thelegal and justice systems.
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I understand it.
I understand the knee jerk reaction to saysomething was done wrong and I wanna get legal
recompense for it.
But I don't think there's anything here that issuable over Some people came into my comments
on this particular tweet and suggestedintentional infliction of emotional distress,
which is funny, but Warner Brothers is nottrying to hurt your feelings.
If you love the nemesis system, if you lovemonolith soft, if any of these publishers or
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studios close a company that you really love,they're not trying to hurt your feelings,
they're trying to make money.
And that might sound callous, that might soundlike it's not terribly responsive to the legal
question, but it is.
If they aren't trying to hurt your feelings,then you can't go for intentional infliction of
emotional distress.
And if you're trying instead for negligentinfliction of emotional distress, the threshold
question there is do they have a duty to youremotional well-being?
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And if they don't have that duty, then you'renot gonna be able to make that claim in most
jurisdictions and in most cases.
So I get that this is kind of a knee jerkresponse.
I get that people are going out there and justsaying something needs to be done.
I understand all of that, but I do wannarespond to it in this video because there are
200 some odd thousand views to a notion likethis one.
And it's important to understand that the lawis not designed to just make everything that
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you don't like illegal or for someone to belegally liable for that thing that you don't
like.
That said, there are questions as I'vementioned before about what the nemesis system
actually does, what was actually protected bythe patent that Warner Brothers got.
So let's go to the primary source material.
So first and foremost, this is a patent thatwas issued to Warner Brothers entitled Nemesis
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characters, Nemesis Forts, Social Vendettas,and followers in computer games.
Now the first thing we see in the abstract,which is again just a summary, it's not the
operative language in the patent issued, isthat what we're covering are methods for
managing non player characters and powercenters in a computer game based on character
hierarchies and individualized correspondencesbetween characters and character traits or
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rank, etcetera, etcetera.
So we're talking about methods, the actual waythat we do this thing, not just the notion that
something is being done.
Proceeding a little bit further, we can seethat the actual claims here, these are the
parts of the patent that are legally operative,are that it's a method controlling game events
involving an avatar operated by a player and afirst non player character or NPC that is
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controlled in response to the first set ofcharacter parameters.
So the things we know about how the playercharacter has actually interacted with the game
so far.
Then, detecting the occurrence of a predefinedgame event, something we've already programmed
in, involving that first non player characterand changing a second set of character
parameters of a second non player character inthe game and outputting an indication of that
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change to an output device, presumably yourmonitor or television for the video game that
you are playing.
Now if that sounds overly broad, you say, Rick,you just described I'm playing a game and I
affect one non player character and a secondnon player character has certain parameters
changed and the game shows me that and I feellike I've seen that before in other games, I'm
not gonna tell you that you are wrong.
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The process of filing for a patent is one inwhich you file it in the USPTO and examiners go
and look and see whether or not what you aredescribing is something that is novel and new
and useful.
And you are supposed to disclose all prior art,everything that's already in existence in the
industry so that they can assess whether or notit's already been used.
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But these examiners are only human beings likethe rest of us.
So we also have a process in place to say if apatent is issued, you can challenge it either
through a federal lawsuit or in the office ofthe USPTO itself.
And yet that hasn't been done at this point intime.
It's only a couple of years old since thispatent was issued.
But one question I would ask of you if you'relistening or watching this video is, is it more
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or less likely for Warner Brothers to defend achallenge in this particular case without
Monolith in their purview.
Said another way, I think again that regardlessof what the headlines say, the exit of Monolith
from the playing field of game developers makesit less valuable to hold the Nemesis patent
solely in Warner Brothers hands.
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Makes it more likely that if someone were tochallenge the validity of the patent that we're
looking at right now, that Warner Brotherswould at least softly yield to some of that
challenge unless it proved that they had somecommercial interest in licensing it out in the
future.
So either way, it's either gonna get challengedlegally or it's going to be of value and
someone else is gonna be willing to pay moneyto have access to the concept from Warner
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Brothers.
And so the loss of Monolith, while tragic forthose involved and certainly a sad point for
people that love its games like no one livesforever, is not, I think, the end of the story
for the Nemesis system.
But at the end of the day, that's all gonnacome down to what you can challenge.
And so in the course of preparing this video,as I so often do, I looked at a number of
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articles on this topic.
And for the first time in in my memory invirtual reality, I found an article that really
spoke to me in the words that I'm used tohearing that really I thought was well
intentioned, well thought of, well thoughtthrough.
And of course, if you're only listening to thisand not watching this, you don't know that I
just highlighted an article that was written byme four years ago.
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And in looking at this particular topic, I readthis article and was happy to see that the past
version of myself, I think, got it right.
And so we're gonna take a look at this article.
We're gonna talk about the things that we'vealready talked about a little bit with respect
to intellectual property.
As better to understand what the likely resultof all of this is.
So while patents are not an unusual part of theresearch development invention creation process
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at many technology companies, they are a bitmore unusual in the gaming industry is how I
start this article.
So it was no surprise when developers acrossthe games industry left to criticize the move
with some calling it gross and others usingmore colorful language.
But as this is so often the case with legalquestions, it's all a bit more complicated than
that.
To begin with, it's important to understand thefoundational principles of intellectual
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property law in The US.
Now, we've already started that process inlooking at the difference between trademarks
and patents and copyrights, but it's also worthnoting why we have any of this.
Some people look at intellectual property andsay no monopolies on intellectual property
should be granted at all.
These paragraphs in this article talk about whythe US government and many other governments
around the world are structured to give termlimited monopolies on inventions and creative
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works to their authors.
You have the exclusive right to control howthings are used when you get a trademark
copyright or patent.
The framers of the constitution believed thatthis was the best way to ensure continued acts
of creation, that books would continue to bewritten and machines continue to be invented,
and in order to ensure that the author or orinventor would receive all rights associated
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with their creation, either themselves or bylicensing the rights to another.
And that's an important piece of this pie.
Right?
I talked about it earlier, but one of thethings that I do in my line of work so so often
is draft intellectual property licenseagreements.
And that can be patents, that can becopyrights, that can be trademarks, that can
even be trade secrets or other kind ofconfidential information amongst businesses.
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Or as this particular law firm puts out, anyform of intellectual property from trademarks
to patents to copyrights can be licensed tothird parties.
Through licensing, an IP owner grants thirdparties the right to use their IP while
retaining their ownership.
Another way to think of IP licensing is theleasing of intellectual property for a fee.
You're renting it out.
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Unlike IP assignments, which we talked aboutearlier from the makers of the nemesis system
up to their employer, their parent employerWarner Brothers, is done by assignment, which
transfers all ownership of the intellectualproperty.
Licenses provide only limited use.
Enabling licensees to benefit from intellectualproperty while protecting the ownership rights
of the licensor.
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So we see this all the time in video games.
We actually see this with respect to copyrightswhen you purchase a copy of a video game for
yourself.
That purchases of a license to use thecopyrighted information, the code on your
console, on your computer, in your home, not tobroadcast it in your local movie theater and
charge entry fees to see it.
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These forms of IP licensing can take threedifferent versions, exclusive licenses, sole
licenses, and non exclusive licenses.
And the primary difference between the firsttwo categories there is that you can
essentially write an exclusive license to bethat you have licensed out your intellectual
property to only this other party and you can'tuse it yourself, or you can retain the rights
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to use it yourself while limiting the licenseout to only one party.
And so there are a number of ways that you candraft these things.
Lawyers can draft them in all sorts ofdifferent creative ways, but the important
piece of understanding here is that licensingout intellectual property is part of the reason
why you get intellectual property rights in thefirst place.
And Warner Brothers, seemingly in need ofrevenue, in need of shoring up various aspects
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of its business or else they wouldn't haveclosed down all these studios so suddenly,
would be interested in the business ofpotentially getting unexpected revenue from
licensing out the nemesis system or any otherintellectual property rights that it has to
what it's already created.
But reasonable minds can differ even on thatscore, so let's continue with the article
written by Hoag circa 2021.
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WB Games pursued the patent over the Nemesissystem for the better part of a half decade,
continuing to get its request denied by theUSPTO over and over again.
Why?
Well, you can see for yourself, but suffice itto say, the USPTO apparently had many of the
same problems that gamers had had with thenews.
Is Nemesis really a new invention?
Isn't the use of procedural generation forNemesis pretty obvious based on what had come
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before?
Don't other games basically do all or part ofNemesis already?
One examiner even went into a multi paragraphcomparison between the Nemesis system and PC
gaming stalwart Crusader Kings, explaining howthe claims WB Games made about the Nemesis
system had already been implemented in any inother corners of gaming.
And I have as a parenthetical here that I haveto admit, I'd never seen a Crusader Kings
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gameplay synopsis in a USPTO filing before.
It's always fun when you dive into gamesfilings of any kind because you see all sorts
of different things in the USPTO or governmentfilings of all sorts.
All of these points are important because USpatent law does not allow for a patent to be
issued for something that is known by thepublic before the request or which is an
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obvious evolution of an existing idea.
Or said another way, if we actually look at thelaw regarding patents, a person shall be
entitled to a patent unless the claimedinvention was already patented or going even
farther.
A patent for a claimed invention may not beobtained if the differences between the claimed
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invention and the prior art, what's already outthere in the world, are such that the claimed
invention as a whole would have been obviousbefore the effective filing date of the claimed
invention to a person having, and this isimportant from a legal perspective, ordinary
skill in the art to which the claimed inventionpertains.
So an ordinary game developer looking at thestate of play before this patent issues could
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have guessed that this was the method that youwould use to do something like this if you
chose to do it, then that shouldn't bepatentable.
That there's not enough novelty.
We only protect things that are new in theworld.
Otherwise, you would quash everybody's abilityto iterate and remix and change things in video
games or any other industry.
And so you can look at this particular issuanceand say, well, maybe this should be challenged.
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And how does that look?
Well, it's a it's a costly process.
Or as this particular law firm puts it, thevalidity of a United States patent can be
challenged in federal court litigation.
Patents can also be challenged in the US Patentand Trademark Office, which in most cases is a
quicker and less costly process.
The PTO provides three procedures by which apatent can be challenged, what they call
interparties review, IPR, post grant review,PGR, and ex parte reexamination.
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In IPRs and PGRs, anyone except the patentowner may file a petition to challenge the
patent.
The filing fees are high.
$41,500 for an IPR and $47,500 for PGR.
And those are always changing, so those couldbe different even today with additional fees
depending on the number of claims challenged.
And I believe there are 36 independent claimsin the nemesis system patent.
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The only grounds that can be asserted in an IPRare anticipation and obviousness, the ones that
we already looked at.
The only prior art that can be cited arepatents and printed publications.
Then there's different methods for the PGR anddifferent methods yet for an ex parte
reexamination.
So long story short on this particularquestion, you can challenge this patent.
You might have been disinclined to do so whenyou thought Warner Brothers games was at full
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firepower and would absolutely defend this tothe mattresses as the godfather might say.
But now with them cutting ties with Monolithand maybe even in concept of the nemesis
system, they might be more open to beingchallenged.
They might be more open to licensing this out.
We don't really know because we are not in theboardroom at at Warner Brothers or Warner
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Brothers games.
We don't know how irrational they might be, buta rational business operating now without the
connection to Monolith, I think, is more likelynot less to actually let Nemesis escape its
doors.
So I think the headlines, while understandable,and the reactions online, while understandable,
are probably exactly the opposite of what thelikely outcome of all this is, which is to say,
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if anybody thinks there is actual interest in agame featuring the Nemesis system or if an
independent developer is making something thatcould conceivably be associated with the
Nemesis system, there might be a reason to goand try to license it out from WB Games just to
cut off any future litigation or problemsbefore they happen.
So that's what I wanted to talk to you allabout today because I do see sometimes these
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headlines and the overall vibe on social mediabeing what I view as exactly the opposite of
the likely outcome, and I wanted to make surethat I share that information with you today.
Or as I say to finish off this article withVGC, is it gross?
I'm not sure I'd go that far, and a number ofcommenters disagree.
But it certainly raises questions for thecontinued evolution of the gaming industry.
(28:41):
In the end, the real nemesis might just be aUSPTO out of its depth and all too capable of
being cowed by a well resourced enterprise.
Time will tell.
Now I didn't see time telling it in thisparticular way, but without Warner Brothers
having as strong of a reason to go and defendthis particular patent, I'm not sure we won't
see Nemesis escape its earthly bones.
(29:01):
That all said, what do you think?
I am very interested in your comments or anyquestions you have on the overall topic of this
video to this video or podcast.
Please do let me know.
Or otherwise, if you'd like to support thesekinds of conversations, please do consider
supporting us through the Patreon, by becominga member of this channel where we're trying to
give more value by having the the virtuallygalley episodes go early a little bit, earlier
(29:25):
for members than they are for the generalpublic or by having super chats in our live
streams.
Otherwise, if you don't wanna do any of thosethings, just subscribing, liking, disliking,
commenting, anything else, or telling yourfriends we're having these conversations is of
supreme help.
So thank you so much, and I'll see you on thenext episode of Virtual Legality.
(29:46):
Virtual Legality is a YouTube video series withaudio podcast versions presented as commentary
and for education and entertainment purposesonly.
It does not constitute legal advice and doesnot create an attorney client relationship.
Hello, and welcome to Virtual Legality.
I'm your host Richard Hoag, managing member ofthe Hoag Law Business Law Firm of Northville,
Michigan.
And today, unfortunately, we have yet anotherstory in the video game industry of studio
closures, loss of jobs, and in this particularcase, a thorny legal issue that I think has
really caused my social media timeline to takeoff.
(00:35):
So I wanna talk a little bit about that, aboutpatents in video games, because I do see a lot
of information out there from well meaningpeople that is maybe not as 100% accurate as it
could be.
But before we start, let's get into thisparticular story.
As Polygon reports, Warner Brothers closesMonolith Productions and Multiversus Studio and
cancels Wonder Woman game in a big shakeup atWB Games.
(00:59):
Of course, Warner Brothers games has been thesubject of a number of videos in virtual
reality primarily because they have been goingthrough a shakeup not just in their video game
productions, but in their movies and televisionproductions after their merger with Discovery.
So this is a story that is bad for the peopleaffected.
We don't wanna discount that at all, but it isnot one that we can take as symptomatic of
(01:23):
larger issues in the video game industry on thewhole necessarily, because this is a very
specific problem for a very specific studio andwe have a lot of history with movie studios and
people that make media in other industries likemovies and television already having issues
producing video games.
We saw this with Disney and their attempts inDisney interactive to make games.
(01:44):
So this is a bad story for those affected.
I don't see it as a story that is emblematic ofa giant sea change in the production of video
games or in what some folks on my social mediatimelines are calling the predecessors of a
video game crash.
That said, this article says Warner Brothersgames is making big cuts, closing three
(02:05):
studios, Monolith Productions, Player FirstGames, and WB Games San Diego, and canceling
its long in development Wonder Woman game, thepublisher told employees on Tuesday.
Now, that first game company, MonolithProductions, is the big ticket item here.
They are a video game company, a video gamedeveloper of long standing.
They've been making games for thirty some oddyears, and they've made some of the most
(02:29):
popular games in history, including mostrecently the the Mordor series, Shadow of
Mordor and Shadow of War in Middle Earth.
And going back a little bit further from that,one of my favorite first person shooters of all
time, No One Lives Forever, which was a JamesBond satire send up, that featured the Kate
(02:50):
Archer you see pictured here as a spy with kindof goofy Austin Powers sixties British flair,
in a first person shooter environment.
But we are unlikely to see that game ever comeback even with the closure of Monolith as put
forth in a Kotaku article that is one of myfavorite on intellectual property from 2015
(03:10):
that says, the sad story behind a dead PC gamehere no one lives forever or NOLF that can't
come back.
And in this article, you see some of the issueswith intellectual property licensing overall in
video games.
One of the things that happens when you make avideo game is that you're using intellectual
property for a number of different sourcesincluding music, including programming, and if
(03:30):
you don't take good care of keeping track ofwhere that intellectual property was sourced
from, you can lose track of who could possiblymake a remaster decades in the future.
So as this article says, the question of whocontrols the NOLF intellectual property has
proved famously difficult to answer and theseries has remained unavailable.
Or as it says a little bit further on, thanksto the ongoing inability and or unwillingness
(03:55):
of three publishers, Activision, twentiethCentury Fox, and in particular Warner Brothers,
the stars of our show here today, to determinewho owned the game, Nightdive, which you may be
familiar with with some of their other projectsbringing things like The Thing or System Shock
to modern systems, is currently abandoning itsefforts to revive No One Lives Forever.
Now here I do wanna disclaim that I am familiarwith Nightdive.
(04:17):
I am friends with a number of the people thatwork there, including but not limited to the
reference Larry Cooperman here, who actuallyhelped me start my Twitter account and
realistically helped me start this journey invirtual reality and on YouTube back when he was
in Ann Arbor, Michigan and working with theGame Developers Association.
So I do wanna say that just so that you knowthat in context of this article.
(04:38):
But ultimately, the point is Warner Brothersand intellectual property questions are going
to be at the heart of what we're talking aboutwith respect to this particularly thorny patent
issue and monolith production.
So, let's take a look at that patent issueright now.
Here's another Kotaku article entitled theNemesis System was one of the best things
(04:59):
gaming ever did, which might be a bit of ahyperbole.
Gaming said a lot of good things, but WarnerBrothers just killed it.
Warner Brothers is shutting down the teamresponsible for one of the most interesting
narrative design mechanics in recent memory.
Now that's an interesting description of whatthe Nemesis system is.
One of the things we will see as part of thisstory is that there aren't a lot of
descriptions that are terribly useful forunderstanding what Nemesis is.
(05:20):
Part of that is because the patent that wasissued for the Nemesis system was written so
broadly.
It's described here as narrative designmechanics.
The easiest way to think about Nemesis, if youaren't familiar with the Mordor or War games,
is that it is a design parameter within videogames that changes how different NPCs,
(05:41):
monsters, enemies in Mordor in the case ofthose games react to things that you do as the
avatar, the the player character in thoseenvironments.
And if that sounds too broad to you, well,that's gonna be part of our conversation.
But what I wanted to talk about first is theway that this is described in these various
articles because I understand why you wouldthink this.
(06:03):
The overall story here is that Warner Brothersgot a patent.
It has the exclusive intellectual propertyrights to this nemesis system that was created
by Monolith.
They closed Monolith over the course of thepast couple of days, and now they are the sole
owners of it, so it's killed.
It's gone, says these articles.
But that's not fully accurate.
That's not how these things work.
(06:23):
The gamer reports, Warner Brothers will stillown the Nemesis system until 2036 despite
Monolith closure.
I did wanna give credit to this particularheadline because this is accurate.
And a number of people asked me when this newscame out yesterday, what would happen to the
intellectual property?
What would happen to the patent?
Does it go away when they closed the studiothat was responsible for its creation?
No.
Warner Brothers paid for those people to makethis thing.
(06:46):
As part of that payment, they received anassignment of the patent.
When they filed for the patent, they paid forthat process presumably at the same time.
And so they, Warner Brothers, not Monolith, wasthe holder of the patent.
They continue to be the holder for as long asit is effective in The United States.
As IGN says, after Warner Brothers shut downShadow of Mordor developer Monolith and
(07:07):
canceled Wonder Woman, fans lament the wastedpotential of its nemesis system.
And I highlight here in the sub headline, it'sgone but not forgotten.
So you see the tenor, the theming of thesearticles is that nemesis must be dead because
monolith is no more.
Or as Eurogamer put it, Shadow of Mordor'sbrilliant nemesis system is locked away by a
(07:28):
Warner Brothers patent until 2036 despitestudio shutdown as industry reacts to closure.
And in their article, they have a gooddescription of the Nemesis system.
It's a clever in game mechanic, says thisauthor, which tracks a player's actions to
create enemies that feel capable of rememberingpast encounters.
In the studio's Middle Earth games, thisallowed foes to rise through the ranks and
(07:52):
enact revenge.
The Nemesis system was set to be utilized againin Monolith's Wonder Woman game, though that
project has now been canceled alongside thestudio's sudden closure, Leaving the Nemesis
system seemingly now lying unused and protectedby Warner Brothers due to its successful patent
application.
But one of the things that I wanted to makethis video for was to establish that
(08:13):
intellectual property is just that.
It's property.
It is something that can be bought and sold.
It can be licensed out.
And one of the reasons that you go and youpatent things like the Nemesis system, if
you're Warner Brothers, is so that you have theability to control its licensure.
Yes.
When you have Monolith and you're making videogames on your own, you might use it for
(08:33):
comparative advantage.
You might say, we're the only stop that you canget the Nemesis system at.
Don't buy those other games.
You only wanna buy Warner Brothers games.
We have the best recipe for your gaming goodtime.
But if you're not making things with theNemesis system anymore and someone else were
interested in using that Nemesis system, youwanna have a patent if you're Warner Brothers
so that you can have the rights to license itout by contract.
(08:56):
And so I do think now, more than before, morethan when monolith was working on Wonder Woman,
it is more likely that we are to see thenemesis system actually break from the walls of
Warner Brothers.
If it is of interest to developers out there.
And so let's take a look at what I mean when Italk about intellectual property.
(09:17):
First, I wanna make sure that we understand thedifferences between these terms because these
get confused a lot.
We're gonna see some confusion in my socialmedia timeline in just a second, but I wanna
explain the differences between trademark,patent, and copyright.
These are the three main areas of intellectualproperty.
A trademark, as described here by the USPTO,the Patent and Trademark Office, is a word,
(09:37):
phrase, or design that identifies your goods orservices.
Think the words Coca Cola or even the branding,for soft drinks that identifies that this is a
Coca Cola, this comes from the Coca Colacompany.
That's a trademark.
By comparison, a patent is a technicalinvention of some new unique and usable idea in
(10:00):
a type of industry or as they describe here, anew type of hybrid engine.
And you might say, Rick, you're talking about avideo game concept.
How is that a technical invention of a uniqueand usable type for some industry?
Well, in this particular case, what we'retalking about is really a method patent.
It's a way of doing things.
So you can't patent, you can't copyright, youcan't otherwise protect ideas.
(10:23):
You protect the execution of those ideas.
You can't protect the notion of the orcs learnabout you and they change how they reference
you as you go through a game.
You can, however, patent the way that you codedit, the way that you had these various
parameters interact, and that is what WarnerBrothers got their patent in even though some I
think rightly think what was issued to WarnerBrothers was probably overbroad.
(10:45):
That there are ways to challenge it becauseit's covering vast swaths of what would be
gaming interactions of some level of normalcy.
Copyright as our final category is the one wesee most commonly discussed here in virtual
legality because copyright affixes to anycreative work that you create.
The words in the novel that you're writing, thecode in the video game that you're creating,
(11:07):
the lyrics to a song, the composition of thesong, those get a little bit more complicated
because music has a bunch of different rules,but the USPTO describes this for purposes of
our intellectual understanding as the lyrics toLet It Go from Frozen.
Again, I don't like to use music as the examplehere because there's so many different
copyrights and intellectual propertyprotections that go into any kind of musical
(11:30):
piece, but that's the difference.
Right?
You've got Coca Cola, the name, the trademark.
In our case, that would be the name nemesis,even though we're not talking about trademarks
here.
The patent, a new type of hybrid engine, or themethod of having other orcs react to the fact
that you killed the first orc in the Mordorgames, from Monolith and Warner Brothers.
(11:52):
The copyright is the code that you wrote to getit to do that in Shadow of Mordor or Shadow of
War.
Those are the differences between theintellectual property pieces, but people get
them confused all the time including honestlyand a little disgracefully at the Supreme
Court.
But I wanted to highlight this particularTwitter user, Alex Hutchinson, who is a
(12:13):
developer who puts out some good information onmy social media as someone that gets it wrong
because it's so easy to do.
For anyone who is interested, Warner Brotherscopywriting the nemesis system from the sadly
shuttered monolith means nothing.
You can't copyright mechanics.
You can build something exactly the same.
You just can't call it a nemesis system.
So for analyzing this for purposes of a legalanalysis, we can look at this in sentences.
(12:36):
For anyone who's interested, Warner Brotherscopywriting the nemesis system is not accurate.
We know that we're talking about patents, notcopyrights.
Then the next sentence is accurate.
Oftentimes when you see these confusions, yousee truth next to lies or at least next to
inaccuracies next to truths, and that makes itall the more complicated.
You can't copyright mechanics.
You can't copyright ideas.
(12:57):
You can't patent ideas.
You have to only be talking about executionwhen we have this conversation.
And yet, that doesn't lead you to this lastsentence which is you can build something
exactly the same.
You can't.
You just can't call it a nemesis system.
That's talking about trademark.
Right?
So we're using the term copyright in thisparticular statement.
We're talking about it as if it were a patentand then we're referencing it at the end as a
(13:20):
trademark.
So all of that's inaccurate.
The state of play right now is that WarnerBrothers holds a patent to the way that the
nemesis system operates, not the concept of anemesis system, which is an accurate piece of
this particular puzzle.
But I wanted to highlight that because this isthe kind of stuff you see on social media and I
want people to be careful out there becauseeven top level lawyers in intellectual property
(13:43):
pursuits get these terms wrong, get the ideaswrong, get the concepts wrong.
This is a particularly complex area of law andso just be careful out there with where you're
getting your information because a lot ofpeople make these mistakes.
The second aspect of this I wanted to talkabout was in a tweet from a synth synth potato.
It said, I absolutely think some law firmshould look into suing Warner Brothers for
(14:05):
patenting the nemesis system and thenproceeding to shut down Monolith.
Honestly, I don't think there's any kind oflawsuit here.
I'm not looking at this in diligence terms.
I'm not going through their paperwork oranything like that.
But this is a knee jerk reaction that I see alot in video games.
It says this bad thing affects me.
It hurts me.
It harms me.
I don't like it.
Somebody should sue.
This is a very kind of American approach to thelegal and justice systems.
(14:30):
I understand it.
I understand the knee jerk reaction to saysomething was done wrong and I wanna get legal
recompense for it.
But I don't think there's anything here that issuable over Some people came into my comments
on this particular tweet and suggestedintentional infliction of emotional distress,
which is funny, but Warner Brothers is nottrying to hurt your feelings.
If you love the nemesis system, if you lovemonolith soft, if any of these publishers or
(14:54):
studios close a company that you really love,they're not trying to hurt your feelings,
they're trying to make money.
And that might sound callous, that might soundlike it's not terribly responsive to the legal
question, but it is.
If they aren't trying to hurt your feelings,then you can't go for intentional infliction of
emotional distress.
And if you're trying instead for negligentinfliction of emotional distress, the threshold
question there is do they have a duty to youremotional well-being?
(15:17):
And if they don't have that duty, then you'renot gonna be able to make that claim in most
jurisdictions and in most cases.
So I get that this is kind of a knee jerkresponse.
I get that people are going out there and justsaying something needs to be done.
I understand all of that, but I do wannarespond to it in this video because there are
200 some odd thousand views to a notion likethis one.
And it's important to understand that the lawis not designed to just make everything that
(15:40):
you don't like illegal or for someone to belegally liable for that thing that you don't
like.
That said, there are questions as I'vementioned before about what the nemesis system
actually does, what was actually protected bythe patent that Warner Brothers got.
So let's go to the primary source material.
So first and foremost, this is a patent thatwas issued to Warner Brothers entitled Nemesis
(16:04):
characters, Nemesis Forts, Social Vendettas,and followers in computer games.
Now the first thing we see in the abstract,which is again just a summary, it's not the
operative language in the patent issued, isthat what we're covering are methods for
managing non player characters and powercenters in a computer game based on character
hierarchies and individualized correspondencesbetween characters and character traits or
(16:28):
rank, etcetera, etcetera.
So we're talking about methods, the actual waythat we do this thing, not just the notion that
something is being done.
Proceeding a little bit further, we can seethat the actual claims here, these are the
parts of the patent that are legally operative,are that it's a method controlling game events
involving an avatar operated by a player and afirst non player character or NPC that is
(16:52):
controlled in response to the first set ofcharacter parameters.
So the things we know about how the playercharacter has actually interacted with the game
so far.
Then, detecting the occurrence of a predefinedgame event, something we've already programmed
in, involving that first non player characterand changing a second set of character
parameters of a second non player character inthe game and outputting an indication of that
(17:16):
change to an output device, presumably yourmonitor or television for the video game that
you are playing.
Now if that sounds overly broad, you say, Rick,you just described I'm playing a game and I
affect one non player character and a secondnon player character has certain parameters
changed and the game shows me that and I feellike I've seen that before in other games, I'm
not gonna tell you that you are wrong.
(17:37):
The process of filing for a patent is one inwhich you file it in the USPTO and examiners go
and look and see whether or not what you aredescribing is something that is novel and new
and useful.
And you are supposed to disclose all prior art,everything that's already in existence in the
industry so that they can assess whether or notit's already been used.
(17:58):
But these examiners are only human beings likethe rest of us.
So we also have a process in place to say if apatent is issued, you can challenge it either
through a federal lawsuit or in the office ofthe USPTO itself.
And yet that hasn't been done at this point intime.
It's only a couple of years old since thispatent was issued.
But one question I would ask of you if you'relistening or watching this video is, is it more
(18:23):
or less likely for Warner Brothers to defend achallenge in this particular case without
Monolith in their purview.
Said another way, I think again that regardlessof what the headlines say, the exit of Monolith
from the playing field of game developers makesit less valuable to hold the Nemesis patent
solely in Warner Brothers hands.
(18:44):
Makes it more likely that if someone were tochallenge the validity of the patent that we're
looking at right now, that Warner Brotherswould at least softly yield to some of that
challenge unless it proved that they had somecommercial interest in licensing it out in the
future.
So either way, it's either gonna get challengedlegally or it's going to be of value and
someone else is gonna be willing to pay moneyto have access to the concept from Warner
(19:06):
Brothers.
And so the loss of Monolith, while tragic forthose involved and certainly a sad point for
people that love its games like no one livesforever, is not, I think, the end of the story
for the Nemesis system.
But at the end of the day, that's all gonnacome down to what you can challenge.
And so in the course of preparing this video,as I so often do, I looked at a number of
(19:28):
articles on this topic.
And for the first time in in my memory invirtual reality, I found an article that really
spoke to me in the words that I'm used tohearing that really I thought was well
intentioned, well thought of, well thoughtthrough.
And of course, if you're only listening to thisand not watching this, you don't know that I
just highlighted an article that was written byme four years ago.
(19:49):
And in looking at this particular topic, I readthis article and was happy to see that the past
version of myself, I think, got it right.
And so we're gonna take a look at this article.
We're gonna talk about the things that we'vealready talked about a little bit with respect
to intellectual property.
As better to understand what the likely resultof all of this is.
So while patents are not an unusual part of theresearch development invention creation process
(20:11):
at many technology companies, they are a bitmore unusual in the gaming industry is how I
start this article.
So it was no surprise when developers acrossthe games industry left to criticize the move
with some calling it gross and others usingmore colorful language.
But as this is so often the case with legalquestions, it's all a bit more complicated than
that.
To begin with, it's important to understand thefoundational principles of intellectual
(20:34):
property law in The US.
Now, we've already started that process inlooking at the difference between trademarks
and patents and copyrights, but it's also worthnoting why we have any of this.
Some people look at intellectual property andsay no monopolies on intellectual property
should be granted at all.
These paragraphs in this article talk about whythe US government and many other governments
around the world are structured to give termlimited monopolies on inventions and creative
(20:57):
works to their authors.
You have the exclusive right to control howthings are used when you get a trademark
copyright or patent.
The framers of the constitution believed thatthis was the best way to ensure continued acts
of creation, that books would continue to bewritten and machines continue to be invented,
and in order to ensure that the author or orinventor would receive all rights associated
(21:18):
with their creation, either themselves or bylicensing the rights to another.
And that's an important piece of this pie.
Right?
I talked about it earlier, but one of thethings that I do in my line of work so so often
is draft intellectual property licenseagreements.
And that can be patents, that can becopyrights, that can be trademarks, that can
even be trade secrets or other kind ofconfidential information amongst businesses.
(21:41):
Or as this particular law firm puts out, anyform of intellectual property from trademarks
to patents to copyrights can be licensed tothird parties.
Through licensing, an IP owner grants thirdparties the right to use their IP while
retaining their ownership.
Another way to think of IP licensing is theleasing of intellectual property for a fee.
You're renting it out.
(22:01):
Unlike IP assignments, which we talked aboutearlier from the makers of the nemesis system
up to their employer, their parent employerWarner Brothers, is done by assignment, which
transfers all ownership of the intellectualproperty.
Licenses provide only limited use.
Enabling licensees to benefit from intellectualproperty while protecting the ownership rights
of the licensor.
(22:22):
So we see this all the time in video games.
We actually see this with respect to copyrightswhen you purchase a copy of a video game for
yourself.
That purchases of a license to use thecopyrighted information, the code on your
console, on your computer, in your home, not tobroadcast it in your local movie theater and
charge entry fees to see it.
(22:43):
These forms of IP licensing can take threedifferent versions, exclusive licenses, sole
licenses, and non exclusive licenses.
And the primary difference between the firsttwo categories there is that you can
essentially write an exclusive license to bethat you have licensed out your intellectual
property to only this other party and you can'tuse it yourself, or you can retain the rights
(23:04):
to use it yourself while limiting the licenseout to only one party.
And so there are a number of ways that you candraft these things.
Lawyers can draft them in all sorts ofdifferent creative ways, but the important
piece of understanding here is that licensingout intellectual property is part of the reason
why you get intellectual property rights in thefirst place.
And Warner Brothers, seemingly in need ofrevenue, in need of shoring up various aspects
(23:27):
of its business or else they wouldn't haveclosed down all these studios so suddenly,
would be interested in the business ofpotentially getting unexpected revenue from
licensing out the nemesis system or any otherintellectual property rights that it has to
what it's already created.
But reasonable minds can differ even on thatscore, so let's continue with the article
written by Hoag circa 2021.
(23:51):
WB Games pursued the patent over the Nemesissystem for the better part of a half decade,
continuing to get its request denied by theUSPTO over and over again.
Why?
Well, you can see for yourself, but suffice itto say, the USPTO apparently had many of the
same problems that gamers had had with thenews.
Is Nemesis really a new invention?
Isn't the use of procedural generation forNemesis pretty obvious based on what had come
(24:13):
before?
Don't other games basically do all or part ofNemesis already?
One examiner even went into a multi paragraphcomparison between the Nemesis system and PC
gaming stalwart Crusader Kings, explaining howthe claims WB Games made about the Nemesis
system had already been implemented in any inother corners of gaming.
And I have as a parenthetical here that I haveto admit, I'd never seen a Crusader Kings
(24:35):
gameplay synopsis in a USPTO filing before.
It's always fun when you dive into gamesfilings of any kind because you see all sorts
of different things in the USPTO or governmentfilings of all sorts.
All of these points are important because USpatent law does not allow for a patent to be
issued for something that is known by thepublic before the request or which is an
(24:55):
obvious evolution of an existing idea.
Or said another way, if we actually look at thelaw regarding patents, a person shall be
entitled to a patent unless the claimedinvention was already patented or going even
farther.
A patent for a claimed invention may not beobtained if the differences between the claimed
(25:16):
invention and the prior art, what's already outthere in the world, are such that the claimed
invention as a whole would have been obviousbefore the effective filing date of the claimed
invention to a person having, and this isimportant from a legal perspective, ordinary
skill in the art to which the claimed inventionpertains.
So an ordinary game developer looking at thestate of play before this patent issues could
(25:39):
have guessed that this was the method that youwould use to do something like this if you
chose to do it, then that shouldn't bepatentable.
That there's not enough novelty.
We only protect things that are new in theworld.
Otherwise, you would quash everybody's abilityto iterate and remix and change things in video
games or any other industry.
And so you can look at this particular issuanceand say, well, maybe this should be challenged.
(26:02):
And how does that look?
Well, it's a it's a costly process.
Or as this particular law firm puts it, thevalidity of a United States patent can be
challenged in federal court litigation.
Patents can also be challenged in the US Patentand Trademark Office, which in most cases is a
quicker and less costly process.
The PTO provides three procedures by which apatent can be challenged, what they call
interparties review, IPR, post grant review,PGR, and ex parte reexamination.
(26:27):
In IPRs and PGRs, anyone except the patentowner may file a petition to challenge the
patent.
The filing fees are high.
$41,500 for an IPR and $47,500 for PGR.
And those are always changing, so those couldbe different even today with additional fees
depending on the number of claims challenged.
And I believe there are 36 independent claimsin the nemesis system patent.
(26:50):
The only grounds that can be asserted in an IPRare anticipation and obviousness, the ones that
we already looked at.
The only prior art that can be cited arepatents and printed publications.
Then there's different methods for the PGR anddifferent methods yet for an ex parte
reexamination.
So long story short on this particularquestion, you can challenge this patent.
You might have been disinclined to do so whenyou thought Warner Brothers games was at full
(27:12):
firepower and would absolutely defend this tothe mattresses as the godfather might say.
But now with them cutting ties with Monolithand maybe even in concept of the nemesis
system, they might be more open to beingchallenged.
They might be more open to licensing this out.
We don't really know because we are not in theboardroom at at Warner Brothers or Warner
(27:34):
Brothers games.
We don't know how irrational they might be, buta rational business operating now without the
connection to Monolith, I think, is more likelynot less to actually let Nemesis escape its
doors.
So I think the headlines, while understandable,and the reactions online, while understandable,
are probably exactly the opposite of what thelikely outcome of all this is, which is to say,
(27:58):
if anybody thinks there is actual interest in agame featuring the Nemesis system or if an
independent developer is making something thatcould conceivably be associated with the
Nemesis system, there might be a reason to goand try to license it out from WB Games just to
cut off any future litigation or problemsbefore they happen.
So that's what I wanted to talk to you allabout today because I do see sometimes these
(28:21):
headlines and the overall vibe on social mediabeing what I view as exactly the opposite of
the likely outcome, and I wanted to make surethat I share that information with you today.
Or as I say to finish off this article withVGC, is it gross?
I'm not sure I'd go that far, and a number ofcommenters disagree.
But it certainly raises questions for thecontinued evolution of the gaming industry.
(28:41):
In the end, the real nemesis might just be aUSPTO out of its depth and all too capable of
being cowed by a well resourced enterprise.
Time will tell.
Now I didn't see time telling it in thisparticular way, but without Warner Brothers
having as strong of a reason to go and defendthis particular patent, I'm not sure we won't
see Nemesis escape its earthly bones.
(29:01):
That all said, what do you think?
I am very interested in your comments or anyquestions you have on the overall topic of this
video to this video or podcast.
Please do let me know.
Or otherwise, if you'd like to support thesekinds of conversations, please do consider
supporting us through the Patreon, by becominga member of this channel where we're trying to
give more value by having the the virtuallygalley episodes go early a little bit, earlier
(29:25):
for members than they are for the generalpublic or by having super chats in our live
streams.
Otherwise, if you don't wanna do any of thosethings, just subscribing, liking, disliking,
commenting, anything else, or telling yourfriends we're having these conversations is of
supreme help.
So thank you so much, and I'll see you on thenext episode of Virtual Legality.
(29:46):
Virtual Legality is a YouTube video series withaudio podcast versions presented as commentary
and for education and entertainment purposesonly.
It does not constitute legal advice and doesnot create an attorney client relationship.
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