11-05-2021

Patents For Slot Machines

(Redirected from Ticket-In, Ticket-Out)

Expert Witness for Casino Gaming Patents, Slot Machines, Gaming Regulations, & Gambling Tax 'Of benefit to online casinos, mobile casinos, social casinos, land-based casinos, slot machine companies, game development studios, gaming regulators, gambling tax attorneys/accountants, and casino gaming inventors & their counsel.'

Ticket-in, ticket-out (TITO) is a technology used in more modern slot machines. It was originally developed circa 1992 by MGM Corporation who purchased technology from a Las Vegas firm Five Star Solutions as well as barcode ticket printing technology from Jon Yarbrough before his VGT success. They also worked with Pat Greene an inventor in Boston of Triad Company who held a patent on a Bill Validator which could read bar coded tickets as well as accept cash. MGM created a consortium of game manufacturers and developed a protocol for its custom Universal Interface Board 'UIB' based on a derivative of Bally Gaming's SDS System. They contracted local firm Applied Computer Technology, Inc. to develop the UIB, its firmware, and also facilitate the organization of the consortium. Later IGT acquired the rights to the TITO patents from MGM and began to modify their own protocol called SAS to implement TITO. It is incorrectly maintained that IGT developed TITO and Bally's Easy Pay which came out many years later.[1]

Overview[edit]

Ticket-in, ticket out (TITO) machines are used in casino slot machines to print out a slip of paper with a barcode indicating the amount of money represented. These can in turn be redeemed for cash at an automated kiosk.[2] The machines utilize a barcode scanner built into the bill acceptor, a thermal ticket printer in place of a coin hopper (some rare machines are set up to pay with coins if the payout is less than the payout limit, and to print a ticket in situations where a handpay would normally be required) and a network interface to communicate with a central system that tracks tickets.

Consortium of Manufacturers[edit]

MGM was in the middle of construction of its major hotel in Las Vegas and invited several gaming machine manufacturers to join a consortium for its Cashless Casino experiment. In the group were Bally Gaming, IGT, Sigma Games, Universal and several others. They were all presented with the MGM UIB Protocol documents and were aided in the realization of the protocol on their gaming platforms. The first trial of the system was actually at the Desert Inn property. MGM Had situated several trailers in the parking lot where the manufacturers could bring their gaming devices for test before being installed on the Field Trial at the Desert Inn.

Advantages and disadvantages[edit]

Like any system, TITO has its share of advantages and disadvantages.

Advantages[edit]

  • Hopper fills for TITO machines are virtually eliminated.
  • Casino patrons no longer have to wait for an attendant to perform a hand pay for large payouts.
  • Makes multi-denomination gaming machines possible.
  • Streamlines accounting procedures due to reduced cash handling[3]
  • Enables ticketed bonusing, coupons and drawings.

Disadvantages[edit]

  • May cause some people to disassociate gambling using tickets from gambling using cash, in much the same way 'credits' are indicated on some machines rather than a cash value.
  • Tickets can be easier to misplace than a large bucket of coins.
  • The lack of the sound of a big coin pay out is a turnoff for some players. Due to this, manufacturers added multimedia sound to the machines to reproduce the sound of coins falling when a prize hits.

Patents For Slot Machines For Sale

References[edit]

  1. ^'Slot machine maker taking a chance with cashless slots system'. 27 January 2001. Retrieved April 4, 2018.
  2. ^Saylor, Michael (2012). The Mobile Wave: How Mobile Intelligence Will Change Everything. Perseus Books/Vanguard Press. pp. 104–105. ISBN978-1593157203.
  3. ^'Ticket-in, Ticket-out Technology'. Retrieved January 22, 2014.

External links[edit]


Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ticket-in,_ticket-out&oldid=962483217'

Gambling Patents a Bad Bet at the Federal Circuit

Written by: Andrew J. Koopman

Patents For Slot Machines Jackpots

This article first appeared in the January 31, 2019 edition of the Legal Intelligencer.

Casino games haven’t changed too much since James Bond first took a seat at the Royale-les-Eaux casino in the early 1950s. While Texas Hold ‘Em may have surpassed baccarat, the staples—blackjack, craps, roulette—have reigned supreme for decades. In an industry with such stable margins, one could be forgiven for assuming that there is no drive (and, in fact, no need) for innovation in casino gaming.

Free

Patents For Slot Machines Games

As a matter of fact, it is not the resources of the players but the rules of the game that may be stifling invention in the gaming arts. The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit’s recent decision in In re: Marco Guldenaar Holding B.V., No. 2017-2465 (Fed. Cir. Dec. 28, 2018) illustrates the long odds gaming innovators have on obtaining patent protection for their original games.

Best Slot Machines To Play

In 2011, Marco Guldenaar Holding (MGH) filed a patent application claiming a method of playing a new type of dice game. The dice game incorporated a novel set of dice having particularized markings, with only certain faces of each die marked. The claimed method recited providing the dice, placing wagers on the possibility of certain dice rolls, and making payouts based on the wagers. MGH alleged that the game’s novelty was specifically tied to the uniquely marked dice which are used to play the game.

Upon examination, MGH’s claims were rejected as being directed to patent-ineligible subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101. The examiner concluded that the claimed method of playing a dice game was directed to an abstract idea, namely a “method of organizing human activities.” See In re: Marco Guldenaar Holding, at 3. The examiner further held the claims unpatentable as obvious in view of U.S. Patent No. 4,247,114 to Carroll. While Carroll was directed to a board game including a different set of dice, the examiner concluded that the dice markings were mere “printed matter” that could not create a patentable distinction. See id. The Patent Trial and Appeal Board affirmed both rejections.

But the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was not the only game in town, so MGH went for double or nothing at the Federal Circuit. On appeal, MGH disputed the characterization of its claims as “methods of organizing human activity,” arguing that the Board improperly used the phrase as a “catch-all” for rejecting claims under § 101. MGH further argued that its novel set of dice markings, and the permutations of those markings in the claimed dice rolls, amounted to “significantly more” than an abstract idea under the two-step framework laid out in Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 573 U.S. 208 (2014).

A reversal, however, was not in the cards. The Federal Circuit, relying heavily on its Alice precedent, affirmed the finding that the claimed dice game was ineligible subject matter. Applying step one of the Alice framework, the court agreed with the Board that rules for playing a game, such as those sought by MGH, constituted an abstract idea. See In re: Marco Guldenaar Holding, at 5. Particularly instructive in the Federal Circuit’s analysis was its prior holding in In re Smith, 815 F.3d 816 (Fed. Cir. 2016), in which the Federal Circuit found similarities between “rules for conducting a wagering game” and “a method for exchanging financial obligations.” Id. at 818-19. Noting the Supreme Court’s denial of patent protection for such financial methods in Alice and Bilski v. Kappos, 561 U.S. 593 (2010), the Federal Circuit broadly branded wagering games with the abstract idea label. See In re: Marco Guldenaar Holding, at 5.

Moving to the second step of the Alice framework, the court acknowledged that “[a]bstract ideas, including a set of rules for a game, may be patent-eligible if [the claims] contain an ‘inventive concept’ sufficient to ‘transform’ the claimed abstract idea into a patent-eligible application.” Id. at 6 (quoting In re Smith, 815 F.3d at 819). On this issue, the Federal Circuit concluded that MGH’s unique dice were not an ace in the hole. The court noted that printed matter, such as the markings on MGH’s dice, cannot generally be relied on for subject matter eligibility under § 101. Id. Turning to the potentially functional role of the dice in the claimed method, the Federal Circuit held that “the markings on each of Appellant’s dice do not cause the die itself to become a manufacture with new functionality.” Id. at 7.

The court’s reasoning in upholding the § 101 rejection against MGH can seemingly be applied to any game featuring innovative game pieces (whether cards, dice, boards, or other items) which are used in an otherwise traditional fashion. And indeed one member of the deciding panel would have gone so far explicitly. Judge Haldane Mayer, concurring with the judgment of ineligible subject matter, wrote separately to express his belief that gaming innovations have no seat at the table when it comes to patent law. In Judge Mayer’s view, the Alice Court “articulated a ‘technological arts’ test for patent eligibility” which games can never satisfy: “While games may enhance our leisure hours, they contribute nothing to the existing body of technological and scientific knowledge. They should therefore be deemed categorically ineligible for patent.” See In re: Marco Guldenaar Holding, J. Mayer concurring, at 7.

Despite the Federal Circuit’s skepticism, the USPTO may have left a narrow opening for gaming inventors. In an update released this January, the Office announced new guidelines for assessing subject matter eligibility under § 101 during prosecution. See 2019 Revised Patent Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance, 84 Fed. Reg. 50 (January 7, 2019) (“Guidance”). Among the new changes, the Guidance instructs Examiners to consider, as part of the first step of the Alice framework, whether a claim that recites a judicial exception “as a whole integrates the recited judicial exception into a practical application of that exception.” Guidance, at 53. Applicants may overcome a § 101 rejection by showing that their claimed game “integrates a judicial exception into a practical application will apply, rely on, or use the judicial exception in a manner that imposes a meaningful limit on the judicial exception, such that the claim is more than a drafting effort designed to monopolize the judicial exception.” Id.

Patents For Slot Machines Machine

Notwithstanding the USPTO’s shift in examination guidelines, the deck is stacked against gaming inventions. Whether for lack of technological improvement or over-reliance on printed matter, novel permutations of traditional gaming styles are unlikely to survive the judicially-created exceptions to patent-eligible subject matter. Barring a change in the law, casinos are free to remain the home of traditional green felt tables, slot machine banks, and maybe the occasional British spy.