The patents behind the mechanics you've played
Outside the trading corpus, a smaller, hand-curated wing: game mechanics that were once somebody's claimed invention. Some are dead, one is dying on a countdown of its own, one is a live legal fight, and a couple are very much still under active patent.
Gaming patents sit outside the patents.db trading corpus this site is built on — these facts are tracked by hand, not pulled from the database. Dates are estimates where noted.
US10926179
The system that remembers the orc who killed you and gives him a scar — still under an active US patent for roughly another decade.
Nintendo v. Palworld
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company sued Palworld's developer over patented creature-capture and summon mechanics. As of mid-2026 the case is fizzling: claims narrowed, related applications rejected, damages estimated in the tens of thousands of dollars.
US8082499B2
The radial dialogue-choice wheel — Mass Effect's signature conversation UI — is patented and active for a few more years yet.
The already-free arsenal
Three mechanics that used to carry a license shadow and don't anymore: the floating direction arrow, the playable loading screen, and a game that lies to you about its own state.
US4843568
"The Kinect from 1986": controller-free, camera-based full-body tracking, patented by artist and researcher Myron Krueger a quarter-century before Microsoft shipped one in a box.
US6252989B1
Render only where the eye is actually looking, cheaper everywhere else — the core trick behind every modern foveated-rendering VR headset, patent-free since 2017.
US5853327
Put a physical figure on a reader, unlock the character in the game — the toys-to-life mechanic behind Skylanders and Amiibo, patented years before either existed.
US7402104B2 (estimated)
The countdown lives at /dying/us7402104b2. This page is where the resurrection unlocks once it flips.
Frequently asked questions
Are these game-mechanic patents part of the trading corpus?
No. The gaming wing sits outside the 13,862-patent trading corpus the rest of the site is built on. These facts are tracked by hand from public patent and news sources, not pulled from our database.
Does a patent on a game mechanic stop others from making similar games?
A patent covers the specific system its claims describe, not a whole genre. Mechanics that predate the patent or differ from the claims may be fine; whether a specific design infringes is a fact-specific legal question. This isn't legal advice.
Can I use the expired ones freely?
Once a patent's term ends or it lapses, the claimed mechanic generally becomes free to implement without a license. Other rights may still apply to a specific game, and this is general information only.