If someone in their line of work impartially claims that what Sony does is far from professional, then it is worth considering what that person claims.

Trademarks and patents often hint at products coming shortly before the official announcement. It is how we first heard about the Kinect, then called Project Natal, and later about the Joy-Con controllers for the Nintendo Switch. These require a definition (application), and in this area, Sony has had a slightly different approach from Microsoft and Nintendo for over a decade.

Florian Mueller is an expert on these patents, having analyzed them for over 20 years. In a recent post on his website Foss Patents, he analyses the terms Sony has used in its trademark applications since 2011. “For more than a decade, Sony’s patent applications have been disparaging Microsoft and Nintendo as ‘inferior manufacturer[s]’ of video game consoles: gratuitous, childish, and unprofessional, with dozens of examples since 2011,” Mueller wrote on Twitter.

He’s not making it up: WCCFTech also featured an example from 2011 where Sony called rival PlayStation a “different albeit inferior manufacturer.” It’s easy to agree with Mueller because he argues that if Microsoft and Nintendo were truly inferior manufacturers, it would not automatically mean Sony would have its trademark validated and protected, no matter how much it criticizes.

“If Sony wants to engage in comparative advertising, it can do so elsewhere. Gamers will not make purchasing decisions based on the language Sony uses in its patent applications. If a small company went to the same patent attorneys and wanted them to file patent specifications that contain such an outrageous passage, most patent attorneys would decline to attach their names to it,” Mueller wrote. And his thoughts paint Sony in a different light.

The company is protesting hand and foot against Microsoft’s move (they don’t want to see the Call of Duty PlayStation community fall after the Redmond-based company acquires Activision Blizzard King), but what Sony is doing is highly two-faced.

Source: WCCFTech