Category: Uncategorized

David Guest Hosts the Room Escape Divas Podcast

by David Spira, posted in Uncategorized

This week I had the pleasure of guest hosting the Room Escape Divas podcast. I interviewed six guests about the ups and downs and all sorts of whacky and bizarre things that happened during the Prexcyt Quest puzzle hunt.

Room Escape Divas Logo, a cartoon representation of the four hosts.

Guests

Justin Nevins, creator of the Cryptex and sponsor of the hunt.

Darren Miller, puzzle designer.

Dan Egnor, puzzle designer.

David Lewis, developer, technical support, and accidental security officer.

Errol Elumir, puzzle designer, and actual Room Escape Divas podcaster.

Manda Whitney, mistress of hints, trolled by Errol, and actual Room Escape Divas podcaster.

Episode

If you participated in Prexcyt Quest, this will give you a behind the scenes listen into how this unusual hunt came about and all sorts of zany and unexpected things that happened throughout its run.

From discussions of unusual “features” like gold allergies and hyper-contagious Zombie Tourettes, to the technical meltdown and hacking that almost destroyed the game, I had a lot of fun hosting. I was pretty surprised to hear much of what went on myself.

I hope you enjoy: Room Escape Divas, Episode 61 – Cryptex Hunt Behind the Scenes

Fighting Back Against Patents [Featured Comment]

by David Spira, posted in Room Design, Uncategorized

We’re trying something new: highlighting an absolutely fantastic comment.

This comment is from J Cameron Cooper on our post ULTIMATE MOBILE ESCAPE ROOMS: Patent Troll?

In the post we look into one company’s claim that they have filed a patent for mobile escape games and examine the legitimacy of such a move.

Intense black & white image of a armored knight ready to strike with a sword.

J Cameron Cooper added:

“Prior to patent issuance, a third party (“3rd party”) can anonymously (1) submit prior art in the form of a preissuance submission, (2) file a protest of an application, or (3) request a public use proceeding.” http://www.bskb.com/news/articles/documents/MAA_ETP_JPAAArticle-AttackingaUSPatentorApplicatio.pdf

While whatever claims one is likely to make in such an application are likely laughable, the Patent Office is in a pretty laughable state and has approved stupider things. Anyone with an interest in this should look carefully at a Preissuance Third Party Submission (37 C.F.R. § 1.290) to inform the examiner of prior art. Even that should be done carefully, however.

I have searched published US pending applications and there is no such thing among them. You can go directly to the USPTO (http://appft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html), but https://patents.google.com/ is pretty handy. Since it isn’t yet published, anyone interested should set up an alert at https://www.uspatentappalerts.com/index.php

It’s not particularly my business, but I’ve set up an alert for this one just because I hate patent trolls.

Oh, and if anyone else is interested, “Die Hard” is a 20th Century Fox property, “Twilight Zone” appears to be CBS, and “Da Vinci Code” is Dan Brown. Large properties don’t seem to care much for enforcing their rights against escape rooms (I think they’re too small) but perhaps one of them would like to hear of this company.

This was a fantastic addition to what we wrote. Thank you, J Cameron Cooper.

In the future, we’ll continue to feature comments on our posts that spread knowledge and drive discussion.