Geek vs Life

Nintendo’s phone. They’ve patented it. They patented it a long time ago.

It is a strange step, going way outside of their normal “game only” stance. Since it took so long for the patent to be issued, the question does stand…does Nintendo still want to do it?

Given what the mockup sketches look like, it’s a far cry from anything that they’ve put out since then. The DS is far more advanced, and should carry many of the same functions. The way the patent is set up, it looks more like a really spiffy Game and Watch. All the programming steps would still work, but other advancements would make the hardware seem totally obsolete.

It does make me wonder, though, how much this process and idea infringes upon Apples iPhone, since so much of the functionality has been patented. A fact that Steve Jobs was rather proud of during his keynote adress at MacWorld. But sifting through hundreds of pages of patents is rather tedious, and I’m no patent lawyer. I’ll keep looking around, and if I find anything, I’ll put an update here.