A few electronic patents that touch on board games:

System and method for touch driven combat system – from Disney Enterprises. A touchscreen device where you move a character on the screen by sliding it. Or basically anything skill related on a touchscreen.

Electronic board game – from Quado Media. A design patent for a tablet of some kind; Quado is, until now, apparently, a software-only board game company.

Game card without semiconductor chip – from Novalia Ltd. Trading cards are not (generally) games, but still. Since this patent was filed in 2006 we’ve seen many leaps forward in electronic game cards (Upper Deck, for instance). Hopefully this won’t bring them crashing to a halt. It doesn’t look like Novalia does much with the technology other than license it out; hard to tell from the web site.

System and method for implementing a game for financial data extraction – from Capital One. Presenting a simple decision-based online game during a financial interaction, in order to teach financial advice.

Anyway, back to non-electronic games:

Card game – A deck of dice, like so many other decks of dice (cited by the patent, by the way). 24 cards, ace to six, in the fours suits. Play dice games with them. Really.

Another winning patent from CFPH.

Educational game board – A design patent. By Yvonne Shields. A game “designed to promote interactive, human contact for two to six players of ages five to ninety five, and beyond, to sit together, think, make choices, interact and thus develop, refine needed skills, and relationships.”

Westernized mahjong game composed of specialized playing cards or tiles – from Philip Chang of Taiwan. A deck of cards that is both a standard deck of playing cards and a modified mahjong set.

Methods and devices for playing a modified baccarat game – from NP IP Holdings, a division of Station Casinos (I think). Deal two or three cards to the player and dealer, and bet on whether the player’s cards are higher or lower than the dealer’s.

Proposition wagering card game – A design patent.

Game for sculpting objects and method of playing same – The game Smash. Basically, everyone sculpts and the judge chooses the best work.