- cross-posted to:
- nintendo@lemmy.world
- games@sh.itjust.works
- cross-posted to:
- nintendo@lemmy.world
- games@sh.itjust.works
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Didn’t they own like a shit ton of patents? Which one are we talking about?
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.
Long story short, the claims get much longer and restrictive through the application process. The example you asked about is currently undergoing a non-final rejection, and the claims will get much more restrictive in further iterations (assuming that the application has actual merit somewhere in the original dependent claims)
You can check the application history here: Global Dossier
These can’t be real, they read like they were generated by an AI prompt.
Those are just abstract if I’m not mistaken. There should be more detailed specifications.
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.
No, that’s the pal-world-monster arts.
Palworld monsters are not AI generated. The artist would very much like to stop being compared to an AI.
I’m sorry who in their right mind signed off on this patent
NON-TRANSITORY COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM HAVING STORED THEREIN GAME PROGRAM, GAME SYSTEM, INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS, AND INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD
Thats literally any online game server
I think that’s setting the context for the claims they make, not a claim in itself.
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
Half of those patents read like if they use vague enough language they can justify patenting how computers work.
Welcome to Software Patents 101.
Since this was filed in Japan, it would have to be parents Nintendo own in Japan that are infringed and those don’t necessarily perfectly match those in the US
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?
You can’t patent certain game mechanics. Would have to be an actual piece of code that was replicated.
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.
That and it also would have been a lot more bad press for Nintendo had they taken action when the game was first popular
Not that Nintendo’s legal team has ever had an issue with bad press
Haven’t seen this meme for a while.
It took a while to catch up
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?
Nintendo files suit against a Pocketpair of deez nuts.
So… Um… If Nintendo patented elements of Pokemon (we don’t know what the patents are yet), then… Why is TemTem allowed to live? TemTem is literally one-to-one Pokemon, all but in name.
If, somehow, TemTem isn’t in violation of Nintendo’s patents, despite just being Pokemon made by someone else, then I’m very curious what Nintendo’s patent actually is.
Could it be the capture ball? TemTem uses cards. Palworld uses balls like Pokemon. Did Nintendo patent the idea of capturing creatures inside of balls, specifically? Is that why Nintendo never went after TemTem?
If Temtem is a Pokemon ripoff then Pokemon is a Dragon Quest V ripoff. All these games involve collecting monsters through battle. Can anyone really patent “monster catching RPG?”
There are only two things Dragon Quest V and Pokemon have in common; monster taming through battle and they’re both turn based RPGs.
Have you played or seen TemTem? It’s literally Pokemon in every way, from mechanics, level design, to even how and what kind of moves the Tems can learn.
Nintendo goes after even the smallest infringements, so since they’ve never gone after TemTem it tells me the patent isn’t “monster catching RPG”. It’s more specific than that, and Palworld somehow infringes on it. As of yet we can only guess what the patent is.
I would love to see a Palworld update that changes the balls to cubes. Same animations and effects, same textures, just stretched over a cube.
And every pal has a badly drawn moustache
I’ve never heard of TemTem before and plugging it into Google Trends, it looks like it’s not even comparable to Palworld. It’s still somewhat big, looks like 500,000 copies sold. But still doesn’t really compare to what appears to be nearly 20 million Palworld players.
Companies lose rights to protect their IP if they don’t protect it themselves, so it may be in their best interest to go after the big competitors and pretend they’ve never heard of TemTem.There is also cassette bests. It just makes it obvious that they fon’t care about their ip or it’s not out of principle, it’s just because someone else made a game that don’t suck and people like, which is something they can not do.
500,000 copies sold is not insignificant. Nintendo fries even the smallest of fish. They’ll literally go out of their way to fuck up someone’s small hobby project only a niche few even care about. So if Nintendo is turning blind eye to a game that copied them in every way one could possibly copy a Pokemon game, then there’s something else going on.
Remember, this is not a copyright case, this is a patent case. Considering Palworld is the only game vaguely similar to Pokemon in some minor ways that I’ve seen use spheres as a catching tool, I’m just (blindly) guessing it MIGHT have something to do with that.
TemTem is probably just further down on the to-sue list.
I agree, and want to add that it could also be that PalWorld is a bigger target because it is kinda like a Mickey Mouse horror film: it runs counter to the brand of Pokemon to have a game where you shoot them with heavy weaponry.
That could track because Nintendo hasn’t gone after Moonstone island either and that uses food / barns to store captured “spirits”.
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 played it and I felt like it borrowed a lot of elements from Pokemon. It wasn’t Pokemon, but you can’t deny it took like 90% of their inspiration from Pokemon and then added guns to it.
Which, incidentally, would probably past legal muster. You can get pretty close to the source material, and as long as it’s your own custom art, it’s not infringement.
That said, lawyers can send a C&D letter for anything. Doesn’t mean it will hold up in court, but they’re betting the target won’t want to pay that kind of money to fight it.
That’s like any FPS game ripping off any other FPS game.
Fight, capture, tame, train, breed animals.
Base building, research tree, enemy raids.
Exploration, resource gathering, survival.I don’t think Nintendo has a monopoly on enslaving animals.
I know what you mean, tho. It’s always described as “Pokémon with guns and 3xE gameplay”.
But does Nintendo actually have a case that will hold up in courts?
Pocketpair seems confident they can defend against it. So either they have done their research and are up for a fight. Or they (think they) are calling Nintendo’s bluff.
But Nintendo has a whole pack of lawyers.Unfortunately there are no details on what the patents being infringemed upon are, just that they relate to “Pocket Monster”.
I don’t believe Nintendo will hold up in court.
But it’s the combination of it all, aside from guns and concentration camp levels of slavery, that make it look like they straight up copied ideas from Pokemon.
It’s true Nintendo doesn’t hold the specific style or gameplay mechanics, and that’s where I think they’ll fail to win a case, but just saying it’s just so blatantly obvious where the inspiration comes from.
They said patent violations, not copyright, so it is about some sort of mechanic or system and not the pals or any specific designs. I’m guessing the thrown ball capture system, since it seems no other developers have published anything using that specifically.
World of Warcraft’s pet capture system was actually very similar to Pokemon, including better traps with better chances of success.
Actually ARK does this with cryopods.
They shouldnt be able to sue for that cause a patent only lasts for 20 years in Japan. I saw some guesses that there might be a patent for one of their legends games that they are suing for.
World of Final Fantasy is as close to a Pokemon rip off as you can get, and they didn’t get sued.
I don’t understand. Everyone, literally EVERYONE was calling this game pokemon with guns when it released, so why are people mad that the makers of pokemon are suing? We all saw it from the start
Just because it has a resemblance to pokemon doesn’t make it pokemon. The gameplay is completely different.
So you don’t catch “pals” by weakening them and throwing a ball at them?
Palworld is an open world survival crafting factory/base building game, that happens to borrow the catching mechanic from Pokemon (who borrowed it from Shin Megami Tensei).
Where is the line drawn between borrowing and copying?
Copying would imply a one to one duplication. The catching system in Palworld differs in multiple ways from the Pokemon system. I think that’s enough to call it borrowing and not copying.
If you can’t draw inspiration from other games, then the gaming industry as a whole is in trouble.
It’s one thing to draw inspiration, and another to directly copy the art style and mechanics of an established franchise to piggyback on their brand recognition.
I think it’s understandable why they sue them (I doubt it holds up in court though), it’s just horrible business practice because Nintendo is too lazy to actually innovate and do something creative for a change, instead of sitting on franchises like that and do fuck all with it, only releasing repetitive piss-poor games based on the exact same concept they invented like 30+ years ago.
The problem is people will still buy Pokemon, even if they’re absolute garbage games. So Nintendo won’t change it either.
I think it’s an issue with Japanese game companies in general. I’ve been complaining about Capcom forever. Megaman 11 was a side scroller. I’m a massive mega man fan and I like the side scroll. But it’s 2024. Can we try something new? I would love a ratchet and Clank style, open world 3d mega man where you go to the different areas of the city and take down the bosses. Also games like monster hunter, are so janky and look 10 years out of date, and most Capcom games look outdated
The comparison is valid, but doesn’t mean it infringes on any patent.
Otherwise, FromSoftware would sue the shit out of every soulslike out there.
Lots of games are also called Roguelike. Based off a game called Rogue. The makers of Rogue do not get to sue the makers of Hades.
Pets that fight for you, including being able to store them for portable carry has been done by many other games, including Ark. In fact, playing Palworld made me compare it more to Ark than Pokemon: base building, automation, catching dinos/animals/monsters of different varieties for different uses. Some can fly, some run, some can be used as parachutes. Some help automate actions at base. There is a tech tree unlocked by leveling, starting with primitive weapons and moving on to guns and higher caliber guns. Blueprints are common in ark for higher quality crafts to build at, you guessed it, crafting benches.
Collecting wood, stone, metals, etc. Also the animal assistants can help there too, but only certain ones. Also, Ark has cryopods for storing your animals/dinosaurs. You even throw em to release.
If they had exactly Pikachu or something it’s one thing, but similar games are just part of the business.
But we’re not talking about a game type here. You can agree that this is a dumb lawsuit, but you have to be honest. Palworld was marketed online as pokemon with guns. It’s not just a similar style but almost identically copies the characters in Pokemon. You can make a stealth action political thriller video game, but if the main character looks just like solid Snake and is called “Viper”, you gonna get sued.
Really? Why does Deathstroke and Deadpool both exist? One is DC, one is Marvel, and Deadpool pretty much started as an expy. Slade Wilson and Wade Wilson. You’re arguing from a place of what feels like it should be wrong, yet your fake example has been done in the real world and they got away with it.
This happens so many times in industries they can often just argue parody. In fact, changing a name slightly is classic parody to avoid being sued. Japan in particular often just bleeps out a syllable or forgets a character in the name.
I guess you must know more than lawyers huh.
I’m sorry, it’s mostly humanoid furries now with the starter Pokémon…
Nintendo is making a case that the use of capsules to capture and carry creatures is their IP.
Does patent mean something else there?
Dragon Ball was using capsules to store things long before Pokemon did. And Dragon Ball Z, which ended in Japan in '96 had already done storing 'creatures in capsules. Saibamen for one. And after the Saiyan saga Bulma puts her dead friends in coffin capsules.
So Akira Toriyama did it before Pokemon.
Yeah, they should absolutely argue that storing things, alive or not, in capsules has been used in numerous movies and shows and that the patent is invalid. Big corporations make tons of patents all the time just in case and then see if they hold up in court later, such as Nintendo with their pokeballs in this case. They still don’t know whether Palworld is an infringement or not
Also, Iron Bands of Bilarro in DnD 5e, but I’m not sure how far back the history of that item goes. DnD 3.5 had Iron Flask that works kinda the same, but Iron Bands is more similar to a Pokeball.
Fuck nintendo. I really hope this blows up in their face like their stupid fucking “King Kong is dk” lawsuit. Fucking bullies. The irony that they blatantly stole the designs of pokemon from dragon quest but are butthurt at palworld for pAtEnT vIoLaTiOn is gross. So glad I just pirate their shit.
Wasn’t universal the plaintiff in the king kong case?
Yup, my bad. Still, fuck nintendo
Yep.
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.
Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. was a 1983 legal case heard by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Robert W. Sweet. In their complaint, Universal Studios alleged that Nintendo’s video game Donkey Kong was a trademark infringement of King Kong, the plot and characters of which Universal claimed as their own. Nintendo argued that Universal had themselves proven that King Kong’s plot and characters were in the public domain in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. RKO General, Inc.
Copyright is bullshit! Fuck nintendo!
Scrolls to ai related lemmy post*
Copyright is sacred! Fuck openai!
At the root of this cognitive dissonance is who benefits and who doesn’t. Copyright law is selectively applied in a way that protects the powerful and exploits the powerless. In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor, but due to the power imbalance inherent to capitalism it is instead used only to protect the interests of capital. The fact that AI companies are granted full impunity to violate the copyright of millions is evidence that copyright law is ineffective at the task for which it was purportedly created.
In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor
Whose propaganda did you suck down blindly? Copyright is meant to foster and improve the commons and public domain, and only that. The goal of copyright is not “money” and monopolies, but that’s what capitalism does to things designated as property.
The fact you can transfer and sell your copyright (because it’s property in capitalism), it becomes a commodity to be bought and sold and traded. If copyright was not tradeable or transferable, we wouldn’t be in in this situation where art is property to be owned.
Its just unprecedented terroritory and the cutting edge of technology is always at odds with the slower justice system. Not taking sides here but the only entities that are on the cutting edge of tech innovation are generally always going to be tech corporations.
We’re saltly because all of these rich people truly got to skirt copyright laws while regular people got in trouble for “digesting the same digital bits.” They even get to resell any work that has been processed and mixed with other works as long as it comes from their AI…
why is Nintendo going after pokemon with guns and not that one game that popped up on the steam home page (I disabled NSFW tags) that’s literally just 2d Pokemon but if you beat the trainer you fuck them.
Because, like many, you can’t remember the name of that game, but just about everyone knows about Palworld.
I will continue to never give Nintendo any of my money on account of their litigiousness.
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.
Asditionally, 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, ahooting, etc. are not elements that can be patented as they are necessary for FPS games in general, but some kind of specitic 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.
Are the SMT games not on Nintendo’s radar? Like, does Id get to sue anyone who makes a FPS?
Its hard to sue shin megami tensei when megami tensei came out first. Also Nintendo is apparently sueing for patent infringment and im curious which patent they are suing for cause most of the og patents should be expired by now. The best guess I’ve seen is maybe patent related to either legends game.
