Sony Has Been Calling Competitors “Inferior” In Their Patents For Over A Decade Now
Florian Mueller of FOSSPatents has made a surprising discovery about Sony’s behavior when it comes to their competitors.
As Mueller has pointed out in his blog, Sony has been filing patents for years that refer to their competitors, including but not limited to fellow console companies Microsoft and Nintendo, as “inferior”.
Mueller has tracked this practice to as far back as 2011, which is an interesting date. 2012 is the year Kaz Hirai stepped down as CEO and President of Sony Interactive Entertainment. While this practice may have started under Hirai, his successors, Andrew House, John Kodera, and Jim Ryan, have continued the practice indefinitely.
Mueller discusses the original patent that set off this search. A recent patent Sony filed for a universal remote control used this language to describe competitor’s consoles, which this remote can also control.
As Mueller explains, patents can usually use the word ‘superior’. This is in terms of explaining how the new technology is better than old technology, what specific drawbacks earlier patents had, and at what particular point they existed.
Of course, the reason this language even comes up as a point of interest is Sony has been surprisingly glib in their communications when it came to the Microsoft Activision deal. Famously, Activision’s Lulu-Cheng Meservey revealed that Sony told them they just want to block the merger.
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick himself confirmed Sony’s statement to them, describing their conduct as ‘disappointing’. It seems that Sony has discreetly held their colleagues in the industry in this low regard for all this time.
Getting back to the patents, Mueller looks back at another one filed in November, for Sony to make their own NFTs and
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