Bad move by Nintendo. This game was on track to be forgotten. Pocketpair forgot about it months ago, but the players were starting to catch on to that. Now there will be a resurgence of interest.
this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2024
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Nah all that gamer malice will be dropped at the tip of a hat with a Switch 2 announcement sadly. Pocketpair will be bled of money into bankruptcy and Nintendo will win.
It is morally right to pirate Nintendo games.
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Fuck you Nintendo.
Since this is over patent and not copyright, wouldn't this have to be about patents filed after the year 2003 and before 2024? AFAIK, patents don't get extended and cannot be re-filed, and Pokemon has existed since the 1990s, where a lot of its patents would have been created. Unless for some reason Nintendo delayed filing the patents for more than 5-10 years but I don't know that patents are allowed to have such a time gap between publication and filing or not. Perhaps Japan has different patent laws, their laws notoriously favor businesses so I wouldn't be surprised.
Additionally, at least in the USA, some things like gameplay elements cannot be patented if they are necessary for the genre of the product. For example, a first person camera, guns, shooting, etc. are not elements that can be patented as they are necessary for FPS games in general, but some kind of specific new technology like the way Doom draws its 3D world could be patented.
For a Creature Catcher game like PalWorld, devices (very vague and generic term that legally should not be patentable because it is too generic BTW) to catch, store, and deploy creatures is necessary to the genre. Unless it is specifically code or the same exact way that both PalWorld and PokeMon function, I do not see how Nintendo thinks they can win other than by bankrupting their opposition like usual.
Really hope this one turns out like Lewis Galoob Toys Inc v Nintendo of America, but the Japan version.
Patent infringement is a curious angle. Do we know what specific patent(s) they're claiming here?
Anybody who's played palworld knows the game is nothing like pokemon. What's next, are they going to claim they are the only company who can make games with 4 legged animals?
I'm sorry, it's mostly humanoid furries now with the starter Pokémon...
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Only surprise here is "Why did it take so long?"
Gotta wait until palworld has made a bucket of money for Nintendo to point at, claim damages, then try to take.
It's kinda surprising they didn't sue over the much less legally grey IP infringements.
Nintendo: Can we sue them over the designs?
Lawyer: Not really, this shit is impossible to prove
...
Lawyer: But we can sue them anyway
Nintendo: Can we sue them over the designs?
Lawyer: Not really, this shit is impossible to prove
~~...~~ starts closing the money briefcase
Lawyer: But we can sue them anyway
Similar visual design happens all the time in Japanese media and there's rarely litigation over it. Patent lawsuits are much more common in Japan.
I don't know if that's true, but most of those patents are incredibly iffy, they seem to describe basic functions of how videogames have worked since WoW.
They seem to have tried patenting having a player character that can walk, drive, and fly in a videogame on May 2, 2024.
It has to do with how the statute is written (I used to do comparative international IP policy research and analysis). Japanese works are given fairly wide latitude in creative sectors based on artistic intent. For example, you'll see knockoff brands all the time in anime or manga, but the intent is clearly world building (or parody), not appropriation for promotional use. That artistic intent standard is used in the courts. This is why all the side-by-side comparisons people here probably saw on Twitter when Palworld came out was more of an ethnocentric American approach. Plus, copyright infringement is frequently incidental and not the result of large investment (unlike patents), so, in a country that prefers to handle domestic disputes informally, these incidents are less likely to go to court.
As a country that more recently entered the world stage based on manufacturing, patent protection is simply going to be taken more seriously as part of the culture. And yes--while I don't have numbers--patent litigation does seem to get thrown out often when it comes to video games, at least the high-profile stuff, anyway. Here's an example between Koei Tecmo and Capcom since I was already on Variety.
Took them a while. But like clockwork, Nintendo never misses a chance to be the villains.
Doesn't matter to them, when millions line up to see the next wacky thing Mario is up to, for the 55th time
They had to wait for PalWorld to sell a lot and make a lot of money so they can financially ruin these people instead of just telling them "don't do that."
Literal Comic-Book Villain behavior.
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Didn't they own like a shit ton of patents? Which one are we talking about?
I wonder if they are going to go after the monster tamer genre as a whole ar some point. I can see them going after tem tem, coromon, nextmon, etc...
None of those made hundreds of millions of dollars.
Digimon did, right? Why didn't they ever go after that?
That's some Tauros-shit (sue me). I hope the Japanese legal system can see that.
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We should play a game of guessing which patent(s) they're gonna try to nail Palworld for infringement with.
How can they let companies file such broad, vague patents for mechanics that have existed since forever? For example, 20240286040, is just what flying mounts have done in WoW since 2007 or even the flying cap in Mario 64 ffs. There are probably other earlier examples, but it goes to show that it's just noise to monopolize innovation and scare other devs.
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My guess is the "Pokemon Box Storage" system since palworld stores pals in a palbox.
Nintendo patents video game inventory system.
Not the onion.
(Not a patent lawyer, and I'm sure it's more complicated than that, but come on)
Is that the wrong link? This seems totally unrelated to Pokemon in boxes, and is more about multi console character storage systems. This patent just sounds like someone described steam cloud saves in way too many big words.
In the "other references" they link to the bulbapedia article for Pokemon box so I figured thats what the whole thing was about, but yeah it does read like accessing data on a server
These can't be real, they read like they were generated by an AI prompt.
Well, it makes me think that AI training was probably biased towards legal drivel like this, since it's public facing, professional and likely even translated in multiple languages.
The student got so good that people think the teacher is imitating it.
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Half of those patents read like if they use vague enough language they can justify patenting how computers work.
Welcome to Software Patents 101.
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Had to wait until no one gave a shit about Palworld anymore
Wait until they make all the money that was to be made on their game.
Then yoink all of that money.
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So like...no mention of which patents?
They're just gonna wing it and hope they have something.
I initially assumed they were referring to the Pokemon franchise but I don't think that's related to patents? Maybe it's a regional thing?
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