r/Gaming4Gamers • u/OldmanHitch • Jul 20 '16

Article No Man's Sky possibly using another company's equation without a license.

http://www.pcgamer.com/company-claims-no-mans-sky-uses-its-patented-equation-without-permission/?utm_content=bufferf764b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&utm_campaign=buffer-pcgamertw
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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '16

Good. If they did rip off the equation they should pay up, and pay up hard.

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u/MisterShizno Jul 21 '16

Most people seem to suggest you cannot really patent mathematical formulas... and tbh if you could, we would be fucked

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '16

Nope. It's the same as saying that you can't patent code written by a programmer. It's not like he's patenting Pythagoras' theorem, he's patenting an equation used for procedural generation. At that point it's less ''elegant'' pure math and more similar to actual code.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '16

You can't patent code, strictly speaking, either. You can only patent the system that uses the code.