I've been watching the Fantasy Sports IP space for a while. The seminal Fantasy Sports patent is "Computerized Statistical Football Game" taught in US Patent 4,918,603. I wrote a post on the Fantasy Football patents back in 2010 on the patent and some of the inventors follow on work. There are lots of interesting angles when you look at the evolution of fantasy sports leagues IP. The inventors are local guys. The original patent was filed in 1988 and was one of those patents that a lot of people didn't think covered a patentable subject matter. Then there were the guys who just decided to infringe the patent. And then there are the inventions that followed. The patent application Tom passed along is the latest entry in the continuum.
The new application, published on December 22 is for "A method of providing insurance to a fantasy sports participant includes receiving a request from the participant for an insurance policy covering an insured risk for an insured amount and providing an insurance policy to the participant covering the insured risk for the insured amount, in exchange for a premium. The participant owns a fantasy team and is in a fantasy league. The insured risk is at least one player on the fantasy team not playing for at least a portion of a fantasy season of the fantasy league. An amount of the premium is dependent on underwriting of the insured risk and the insured amount."
The majority of claims seem to be missing the standard business methods mumbo jumbo. It shows up in claim 25.
Here are Claims 1-4:
1. A method of providing insurance to a fantasy sports participant, comprises: receiving a request from the participant for an insurance policy covering an insured risk for an insured amount; and providing an insurance policy to the participant covering the insured risk for the insured amount, in exchange for a premium; wherein the participant owns a fantasy team, and is in a fantasy league, the insured risk is at least one player on the fantasy team not playing for at least a portion of a fantasy season of the fantasy league, and an amount of the premium is dependent on underwriting of the insured risk and the insured amount.
2. The method of claim 1, wherein the fantasy league has a corresponding real sports league.
3. The method of claim 2, wherein the real sports league is a professional sports league.
4. The method of claim 3, wherein the sport of the real sports league is selected from the group consisting of football, baseball, basketball and hockey.
Here's Claim 25:
25. A computer program product comprising software encoded in computer-readable media, for providing insurance to a fantasy sports participant, the software comprising instructions, operable when executed, to: receive a request from the participant for an insurance policy covering an insured risk for an insured amount; and provide an insurance policy to the participant covering the insured risk for the insured amount, in exchange for a premium; wherein the participant owns a fantasy team, and is in a fantasy league, the insured risk is at least one player on the fantasy team not playing for at least a portion of a fantasy season of the fantasy league, and an amount of the premium is dependent on underwriting of the insured risk and the insured amount.
(Looks like the a patent attorney or the examiner provided guidance here...)
The patent application is an interesting read. It will be interesting to see what happens to it as it moves along the patent prosecution continuum.
Thanks again to Tom for passing it along.
No comments:
Post a Comment