Amusement Park May Get Sued For Patent Infringing Ride

from the the-roller-coaster-of-patent-law dept

As a kid, I used to go to a lot of amusement parks. I actually spent a couple summers at a camp that basically drove around the east coast from amusement park to amusement park. After a while, you become pretty familiar with the "standard" rides -- and while different amusement parks have different themes, the rides follow a basic theme, and that's actually a good thing. You do see variations on those themes, as different providers differentiate and tweak different designs to make them better and even more enjoyable. But, these days, that's becoming more and more difficult because, you guessed it, amusement park ride-makers are using patents to stop competitors.

Reader Jerry S points us to the story of how Cedar Point, one of the more famous amusement parks around (yeah, I went there too) might run itself into a legal fight because it wants to buy a ride called the Wind Seeker, made by Dutch firm Mondial. The only problem is that competing ride maker Funtime Group, from Australia, makes a ride called the StarFlyer, on which they hold a patent (7666103), and they say that the Wind Seeker infringes. Also, Funtime claims that it'll be suing Cedar Point -- though, oddly, it has no plans to sue Mondial.

Now this is actually a case where Mondial admits, straight up, that it came up with this ride as a response to StarFlyer, saying they were getting requests from customers for a ride like StarFlyer, but which functioned better in more windy conditions (hence the name Wind Seeker, perhaps). And this is exactly how innovation is supposed to work. You have one product that doesn't fully meet the needs of clients, even if it has some nice features, and so competitors come along and tweak it and innovate... and the originator is supposed to come along and innovate on top of that as well. Sitting back and threatening to sue for patent infringement isn't innovation at all.

Filed Under: amusement parks, patents, rides
Companies: cedar point, funtime group, mondial