There’s a bit of drama brewing online about Sony and the way the company handles its patent filing. According to a new report from a patent professional with over twenty years of experience, Sony has been unprofessional when it comes to the manner in which the company files its new patents.
If you don’t know, Sony files dozens of patents a year, as other businesses do. It allows them to secure the rights to create certain tech without their competition stealing ideas and doing the same thing. However, according to Foss Patents, Sony is the only company known to ridicule its rivals when filing these records.
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The blog post claims that Sony has been unprofessional and childish since back in 2011 and almost every patent the company has filed since has in some way or another ridiculed its direct competition. For example, Sony often uses words such as “inferior” to describe how much “better” its patent is compared to its rivals.
A patent filing from Sony for one of its new gaming devices says:
“An end user device may be a personal computer, a home entertainment system (e.g., Sony PlayStation2(R) or Sony PlayStation3(R) or Sony PlayStation4(R)), a portable gaming device (e.g., Soy PSP(R) or Sony Vita (R)), or a home entertainment system of a different albeit inferior manufacturer.”
Of course, it doesn’t take much to see who Sony refers to in this patent. A “home entertainment system” is a video game console so this patent clearly targets Microsoft and Nintendo. The patent says that Sony’s hardware will be superior.
Keep in mind that there’s a lot to consider when looking at patent laws. Foss Patents says that there’s no real need to ridicule other hardware when filing patents for new tech. It is natural to discuss certain setbacks such as inferior performance, more energy use and cost when filing patents. But calling competitors “inferior” is childish and unprofessional says Foss Patents.
He says that patent filing isn’t a marketing stunt and Sony should engage in comparative advertising elsewhere. The post continues to detail Sony’s past filings and reveals that the company has been doing this since way back in 2011. So much so that there are over a dozen unprofessional filings listed under the company at the time of writing. All of which in some way or another, ridicule its competition.
While Sony isn’t breaking any laws by acting this way, it does speak volumes for the type of business it is and the way we have seen the company act. Just recently Sony was caught out for openly stating it had no interest in Call of Duty and that the company simply wanted to stop the ongoing Microsoft X Activision Blizzard deal.
The company’s past behaviour has even forced Activision CEO Bobby Kotick to apologise to staff saying Sony was “unprofessional and embarrassing”.
Source: Foss Patents
