[cicada]

The solution seems obvious now, but the problem had to be framed that way to get it. I can only speak for myself, but this had not occurred to me before reading the article. I suspect that it would be the same for most -- considering that people argue the positive impact of piracy on business in terms of marketing, not revenue.

[_delirium]

The embed-ads-that-travel-with-the-game solution is fairly well known among casual-games developers I think. That doesn't make it a bad idea, but I'd be surprised if it's really patentable, unless the "invisibility" they discuss is particularly novel. I'm not exactly sure what they mean by that part, so hard to say.

Here's a CNET article from 2007 touting the benefits of ads embedded in flash games, one of which is "Even if the game is stolen, even if it runs on a site surrounded by other HTML ads, the ad can still play in-game": http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-9797689-2.html

[gaius]

I think they mean the ads only appear if the animation detects that it's been served from a website other than the original.

I don't think this is especially novel; not for ads but I remember writing code back in the 90s for Java applets to check that they were being served only from the original website.

[sushrutbidwai]

Originality of solution is not in developing a technology (though getting patent for that might mean it is), but identifying a key problem in business and using technology in an innovative way to solve the problem.

[gaius]

Agreed. Doesn't mean it's patentable tho'.