Sony has been seen to abandon its latest attempt at getting into the “make your own kart racer” market by burying its latest release, LittleBigPlanet Karting under both the major international event of Halo 4 and the US Presidential elections. Many have seen this as a vote of no confidence in the game from Sony, but the truth is much more interesting….
“You see, we’ve technically broken our own patent,” explained Sony’s copyright lawyer Sandra Bullock (no not that one). “When we were asked to secure the future of the ModNation Racers franchise we filed several incredibly strong patents, the kind that are worth millions. Sadly ModNation Racers never became the big franchise we were hoping for, and so the patents sank to the bottom of our filing cabinet. Then someone came up with LBP Karting and we just ploughed on ahead forgetting about ModNation. The problem is LBPK has made it so we’ve actually broken all of those patents and now owe ourselves several millions in legal damages. That might sound redundant but this means that if someone who wasn’t an internal lawyer at Sony realised they would pursue the claim, get paid or the job and we’d be out of pocket from paying the lawyer. If someone tries to break your patent you have no choice but to enter legal action or else lose the patent.”
Sandra then tried to explain that this was all “off-the-record” or something and said that if I published it we’d get sued yada yada yada I’ll be honest and phased out because behind her there was this guy with a mole just right in the middle of his lip and it was weird. Anyway I’m sure it’s fine.
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