My personal conclusion is: "Don't let it bother you that someone copies your design in Minecraft, just have fun yourself" Right?
I've just done a clean up of this thread, try to keep it on-topic and without accusations and bickering please.
Noodles were independently invented in both China and Italy. [this is completely on topic as an example of an idea that was implemented in two distinct geographical locations]
Not to mention that every staff member who has weighed in agrees that no one owns ideas or even designs and implementations at EMC. So such a patent here would be completely unenforceable.
The main problems with the idea of a patent company, imo, are the following. They are not likely to be enforced, as Edmund said. And like kilmannan put it, no one will really care. "So what, I build a grinder that looks like player X's for player Y, and I've INFRINGED ON A PATENT?! This is EMC, not the real world. Go **** yourself." Also, so many people here are less than 14 years old, and I'm going to bet that most of them do not fully understand the patent system. It's like the stock market; it has to be childishly simple for it to work in a 30,000 member community, and by design, it's just not.
Yknow, we arent really helping ourselves by just posting on this, but im cool with it. Its not like more than 1/2 the noobs in this community even read the forums. But whatever.
The purpose of this thread was not to try to establish any kind of new rule. The reason I created this thread was to provide a place for users to express their opinions about a topic that's come up a lot recently. It doesn't matter if the people that don't read the forums don't read the forums, because it's just a place for people to talk.
just browsed this thread.. I dont see the "examples" you guys keep reffering to... is there a link to another thread or something? what examples? 1-6? huh?
ah, i see... well in that case, im not gonna jump in the koolaide without knowing the flavor! However I will say, "stealing" ideas in a video game? Thats a little far fetched.. does that mean that everyone "stole" the idea from the first guy to jump over the end tunnel to go to the warps in Super Mario Brothers? If you design something on your own and someone see's it and appreciates its worth enough to replicate it you should take that as a compliment, not go try and get them bannned.....
Exactly. I am proud to say that I built THE ORIGINAL trivia machine on smp2. After I had held a few rounds, I started seeing ads in chat for others' places. When I saw them, they were actually de-provements from the original. I was somewhat bummed that no one wanted to expand on my idea, but I was sure glad that I had made something that others thought was cool enough to copy. Plus, some of them even gave me credit, which was nice.
After spending the past hour reading through all the posts so I didn't have to say tl;dr and then realize that I was saying something that'd been said before... here's my response: ...It scares me, because most people don't think hard enough to realize that most (read: all) news outlets are biased in one way or another. A bit off topic, I know, but I couldn't let this pass. The intelectual laziness of the general population (not individual people, but the population as a whole) scares me more than almost anything else Answering the second part: Leibniz and Newton both discovered the fundamental theorem of calculus at almost the same time. As for the first part, I'll agree that that's completely true, which is why I'm very happy that my compsci professor encourages us to look at examples. Also, to whoever said that everything's been thought of before, I would say this: Everything easy has been thought of, but with our expanding knowledge comes more things to think of... and don't forget that taking a good idea and changing it to make it great (see below) isn't something to brush aside. And finally, the very first thing I thought of when I saw this thread, and something that still seems relevant: THIS video explains it well I think. THIS article is also a good source to understand the same concept, and also find out a bit more about Apple's former CEO. From the article: "They believe that Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had a far larger population of skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: resourceful and creative men who took the signature inventions of the industrial age and tweaked them—refined and perfected them, and made them work." tl;dr - My opinion: People are lazy, it scares me. Also, on topic, go ahead! Take ideas! Take them and make something amazing with them. Just give credit where credit is due. And if it's your idea being taken, either change to stay ahead of the curve and stay in business, or sit back and smile knowing that YOU were the great mind behind the idea. Sorry about the length
