ebay.com link: itm

Ran across this proto playfield today

http://www.zidware.com

What's new in the way of MG rules, support, tweaks. Lol etc.. His site under revamp again?

What a flake.

"Social Inventions"

Guess he needs a new business direction since the pinball thing ain't happening.

lol.

If 'social inventions' refers to getting a community to send a million dollars for figments of his imagination then this is one business jpop is actually qualified to run and I expect him to do gangbusters

Hey, did any of the original owners reach out to John about their warranty-covered machines on the offchance there were defects in material or workmanship?

http://www.zidware.com/pinballwarranty.html

Zidware Inc, ("ZW") is pleased to warrant, only to the original purchaser ("Warrantee"), that this pinball machine ("Product")Product will be free from defects in material and workmanship under normal use and service for ninety (90) days after delivery to the Warrantee (the “Warranty Period”).

Aw, I miss break dancing girl stock photo

Latest update from JPOP docket...

May JPOP update (resized).JPG

Yep. I will personally be giving my deposition shortly via remote video conferencing.
Can't wait to voice my mind and the reality of this shit show.

May I remind you sir, you are under oath!

Did you order the code red, fattrain?!?

F-bombs and calling people dickless cowards are allowed under oath!

I don't see anything wrong with streaming this deposition! Put it under creative

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Me too, time to reap the whirlwind JPOP!

I did and had a positive experience.

I haven't set up my game (MG#00) and never powered it up, but I removed it from the box for visual inspection. (Contemplating selling it and wanted to save the "first power up experience" for the buyer/let it remain New Out Of Box). Anyway, discovered a broken plastic. I called JPop, he apologized and promised a replacement would be sent. Replacement plastic plus another goody arrived in the mail today.

Anyone care to bid? Or just BIN!

This is the one and only JPOP Enchanted Owl of Devine Luck and Fantasy!!!

ebay.com link: itm

Nice description!

Wow, and I was shocked to find a couple of Zizzle pinball machines selling for over $400 lately on Ebay. Maybe if I upgraded graphics to match this on a Toys-R-Us level machine I could rake in a few $$.

He took your call and apologized?? Wow how do you rate! JPOP has $4750.00 of my money and I gave up trying to call and email him more than a year ago.

Call him and say your plastic is fine, you just don't have the rest of the machine.

You can bet he is logging these customer service calls (on things he can actually service) to show the judge someday in order to appear like a real business that doesn't deserve to have its owner tossed in the clink.

*67 + the number

JPop just recently received a Notice of Allowance for this patent claim in application 13/709,056 (available in USPTO Public Pair) http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair

How long before he is suing JJP for the Dialed In "Quantum Theater" and Stern for their Ecto-goggles?

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The date of the patent application would even beat the WOZ Crystal Ball unveiling but I doubt that would be considered a physical interaction between the ball and the display.

What a crock! RFM did it better with its virtual screen.

This patenting of simple ideas stifles innovation. Intermittent windshield wipers, anyone?

I think you mean RFM. Anyway, Pinball2000 was not a combination of a "video display provided within the cabinet" and "an inclined playfield provided within the cabinet" as required by the patent pending claim.

Intermittent windshield wipers was genius and made driving much safer. If only the major auto makers had just accepted that they owed the poor guy that invented that technology like honorable people should rather than act as thieves and try to steamroll the guy with lawyers.

They should make him prove he can make magnets work on that pile of shit he dumped on the market before granting him any pie-in-the-sky patents.

I fixed that immediately, before you even finished your post! And no shit it wasn't a video display in the playfield (it was elsewhere in the head part of the cabinet), I said it was better, as in cooler!

And insinuating I am not honorable for simply suggesting an example of an idea that ought to be too simple to patent is a low blow. The guy didn't invent the concept of intermittence. Just as Jpop didn't invent the concept of a screen reacting to a ball. So what if it happens near the screen?

Sorry. I did not mean to sound like you were not honorable. It was the auto manufacturers that were not honorable. There is a good movie about the man's struggles to get his intermittent wiper invention patented. The manufacturers were essentially stealing his ideas and bullying him because he was a small entity and they thought they could get away with it.

The patent system was set up by Thomas Jefferson and a few others to promote invention, not to suppress it. Essentially, if someone comes up with a solution to a problem where the parts are well-known but the specific arrangement to perform a beneficial function/utility is not obvious then a patent is typically awarded to the patent applicant.
I am not saying one way or the other whether John's allowed patent is valid or not. I was just trying to raise the awareness so people would not be surprised if JPop tries to finance his RAZA and Alice games from the damages/royalties he may obtain by going after JJP, Stern and possibly Multimorphic (if their screen reacts to the ball directly which I have no knowledge on P3).

If JPop did that, that would likely make him an even bigger villain in the pinball community by hurting the manufacturers that have actually been building working games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Kearns

As one of his victims, who got nothing from my money, not even a shirt or piece of ZombieYeti art signed by John, I wish he'd just go bankrupt already and end this. Him trying to "save" himself by enforcing a patent on existing pinballs would be ridiculous and he would deserve whatever additional scorn he earned as a patent troll.

That's not how I want my machine financed.

The "Holographic" idea for arcade games goes back a lot longer than even P2K. I remember I have a Coney Island Rife EM gun game. Can you imagine in the day and age having an arcade game where you shoot people in an amusement park? Anyway. It projected a guy on a pogo onto the glass. If your shot lined up to the current position of the image you scored.

The base ideas for these things go back decades. Each new application of the concept is barely a tweak and not a significant change or improvement.

My wish exactly. I wish John would just accept his former pinball glory is gone permanently and go away from the hobby forever.

Perhaps he could get into board game design or something else I don't give a crap about.

Doesn't an original idea become yours upon the first sale of the idea. I believe it does then getting a patent through the government helps seal the deal?

Sales have nothing to do with obtaining a patent. However, previous sales can be used to reject a patent application.

It used to be that whoever had the first dated documented proof of an idea would get granted a patent. Because that's easy to fake, they recently changed the rules about a year ago so now it's the first to patent.

Anyone can design and sell anything, but if you aren't protected by patent another company can come along, file a patent, reverse engineer your product, and sue you for the design.

Anyone can patent anything.

It's DEFENDING that patent that can be hard and expensive.

Rereading I see that wasn't your intent, my bad. But I still think patents should be used on things that actually required development effort, not just some obvious idea. Still, I suppose those wipers aren't the best example.

In that case I'd say Stern and JJP have nothing to worry about. Jpop has no extra piles of money lying around for that. And the damages would be orders of magnitude smaller than was the case with, say, them wipers. His patenting attempts are just another example of trying to appear like a real biz and stay out of prison.

P3/Multimorphic was demonstrating this technology well before any Zidware patent was filed. I suppose technically the P3 playfield isn't "proximal" since it literally IS the playfield.

I seem to recall seeing a video where the screen reacted to the location of the ball as the ball passes. Is that something that may be in a video from 2011 or earlier?

There's very early proto vids close to that time I believe, might be 2012

March 2012 at Texas Pinball Festival, written up by PinballNews.com.

JPop's filing date was Dec. 2011 so March 2012 is not likely good enough.

Capcom's Flipper Football did it in October 1996, a full year before CV was released. It has a row of targets below the rear-playfield display. You aim the ball under the display to dodge the goalie.

http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=3945&picno=10746&zoom=1

John has one foot in the grave and one on a banana peel. He will do nothing to cause any waves with anyone.

Nobody is that stupid.

So how are depositions going?? Anything good to report??

So is this really a threat -- I'm not clear on what the patent(s) is/are exactly for?

Edit never mind -- reread it. If this affects the p3 shipment another reason to be pissed off at jpop. I assume though if he decided to sue over infringement that there could be a legal battle and the patent award could be thrown out if it's deemed invalid?

If a tech has been built before without patent is a later patent on it from another company still valid?

I could be using the wrong date from that web page, but I see "Filing or 371 (c) Date: 12-09-2012"

Here's the link to the P3 news article: http://www.pinballnews.com/learn/p3/

JPop's provisional application was in Dec. 2011.

The 1996 Capcom Flipper Football above is interesting.

If it was public more than a year before the date of the application then the application should be be rejected.

John:
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