14 DAY TRIAL // The patent for the loading screen has finally expired. In case you think that you might have read that wrong, here is it again. The patent for the loading screen has finally expired.
How something like the loading screen can ever be under a patent is probably one of those questions that you can't really answer unless you know beforehand that someone is the villain in this story. In this case, the name of the villain is Namco, who figured out pretty early that you can take advantage of the patent system.
So Namco released Ridge Racer all the way back in 1993, and it had some pretty nasty loading screens. No one likes to wait around until the game has been loaded and that was true back then as much as it is right now. Namco inserted a much lighter game called Galaxian (yes, that one) that users could play during the loading of the game. Simple and efficient.
Namco had a patent on that loading
The game was released in 1993, but the patent was recorded in 1995, so it took them a couple of years to figure out that there is money to be made.
"Unnecessary wastage of time can be prevented by first loading the smaller, auxiliary game program code into the games machine, before the main-game program code is loaded, then loading the main-game program code while the auxiliary game is running," reads the patent entry.
For some weird reasons, this fit the bill for a patent and it lasted for 17 years. This simple patent prevented companies from building games into their loading screens and made us watch loading patterns and read hints. What did Namco have to gain from this? Absolutely nothing, since it's unlikely that anyone gave them money for the privilege of using a game as a loading screen. There is one thing that we can do right now.
We should all say "Thank You Namco" for being a greedy company.