Nintendo files lawsuit against Palworld
Nintendo files lawsuit against Palworld
"Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions"
That took a minute
112Had to delve into the patent dungeon. Its large and all the names are incomprehensible.
62It could be they waited to not trigger the Streisand effect too hard.
16
Fuck off, Nintendo.
78All my homies hate Nintendo.
4
It is probably something stupid like Nintendo having a patent for "pocket" in names, since Pokemon is "pocket monsters"
Patents in videogames should be banned.
74That would be trademark infringement. Patents are much more nefarious.
25I agree, but I think all intellectual property laws should be repealed. I came to the conclusion that patent, copyright, and trademark are all varying levels of bad years ago and I think it clearly holds the human race and human progress back by limiting creative iteration.
6
Interesting it's a patent lawsuit and not copyright. I haven't played Palworld and barely know how Pokemon works; is the gameplay in any way similar?
57They'd have very little chance in a copyright suit and they know it. Because you can't copyright game mechanics or general concepts, and those are the things Palworld pretty obviously copies.
41You capture monsters in balls, hurting them more makes it easier.
30Except for the capture mechanic working similar, which hopefully was not just copy-pasted, the gameplay is completely different. Palworld plays like Arc x Fortnite, while Pokémon plays like Final Fantasy.
And the general design-inspiration itself shouldn’t be an issue. Because I don’t think "style" can be copyrighted
25
Fuck Nintendo don't buy their products.
52Nintendo learned Patent Troll!
47Didn't Nintendo basically invent it?
On the other hand, looking at some screenshot I think Nintendo might have a point in this case.
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Outside of a passing similarity to Pokemon, I wonder what the suit is about
45It's about Nintendo and their rabid legal practices.
90
Nostalgia is a hard drug. You can still appreciate games from you childhood & not buy games or consoles from a evil company.
26Plus, there's always piracy. With that said, I generally prefer the older games anyway.
18Yup. Piracy is bad so make sure to avoid that. Specifically, do not search for “Yuzu 1734” and combine it with “Firmware 18.1” and “Prod keys 18.1”, because if you did that you would be all set to pirate switch games. So to repeat, definitely don’t search for these things. Now you know what to avoid.
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Nintendo sues Nintendo for using Nintendo intellectual property
26Is there any way to support pocketpair during the lawsuit? I already bought the game, and it's one of my favorites, and pokemon can eat a dick
19Weird. They seemed fine with it when it launched.
18The lawyers had time to figure out an angle.
17it's really funny to me how obvious the.. "inspiration" of this game is from pokemon, and yet nintendo has been struggling so hard to come up with something to sue them for, like i don't really care about this in and of itself, but seeing a big company unable to remove a splinter from their toe and copyright unable to be enforced brings me joy.
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They are working on a new Legends game, which is somewhat similar in gameplay.
Could be that they'd rather not have any association made.
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It's speculated that the patent in question (or one of) is one that essentially protects the gameplay loop of Pokémon Legends Arceus.
https://ipforce.jp/patent-jp-P_B1-7545191
Running the first claim of the invention through Google Translate yields this massive run-on sentence description:
The computer causes a player character in a virtual space to take a stance to release a capture item when a first category group including a plurality of types of capture items for capturing a field character placed on a field in a virtual space is selected based on an operation input of pressing an operation button, and causes a player character in the virtual space to take a stance to release the capture item when a second category group including a plurality of types of combat characters that engage in combat is selected, and determines an aiming direction in the virtual space based on a directional input, and further selects the capture item included in the first category group when the first category group is selected, and the combat character included in the second category group when the second category group is selected, based on an operation input using an operation button different from the operation button , and causes the player character in the virtual space to take a stance to release the capture item when a first category group including a plurality of types of capture items for capturing a field character placed on a field in a virtual space is selected, and determines an aiming direction in the virtual space based on an operation input using an operation button different from the operation button, A game program which, based on an operation input of releasing the operation button pressed when having the player character perform an action, has the player character perform an action of releasing the selected capture item in the aiming direction if the capture item is selected, and has the player character perform an action of releasing the selected combat character in the aiming direction if the combat character is selected, and when the capture item is released and hits the field character, makes a capture success determination as to whether the capture is successful, and when the capture success determination is judged to be positive, sets the field character hit by the capture item to a state where it is owned by the player, and when the combat character is released to a location where it can fight with the field character, starts a fight on the field between the combat character and the field character.
Essentially, Nintendo has a patent on video games that involve throwing a capsule device at characters in a virtual space to capture them and initiate battle with them. In other words, they have a patent on the concept of Poké Balls (as they appear and function in Legends Arceus, specifically).
Palworld has "Pal Spheres", which are basically just Poké Balls with barely legally distinct naming.
If this sounds like an unfairly broad thing for Nintendo to have a patent on, I'm not so sure I agree. It's not like they're trying to enforce a blanket patent on all creature collectors. Just the concept of characters physically throwing capsule devices at creatures.
If you think about it, that's kind of the one thing that sets Pokémon apart from others in the genre. If there's anything to be protected, that's it. It's literally what Pokémon is named after--you put the monster in your pocket, using the capsule you threw at it.
Palworld could have easily dodged this bullet. They claim they aren't inspired by Pokémon, and that they're instead inspired by Ark: Survival Evolved. Funny, then, that Ark doesn't have throwable capsules, yet Palworld decided to add them. I'm not sure I buy their statement. And if this is indeed the patent being violated, I don't think a court will buy it either.
I'm not trying to be a Pokémon apologist here. I want Palworld to succeed and give Pokémon a run for its money. But looking at the evidence, it's clear to me Pocketpair flew a little too close to the sun here. And they're kind of idiots for it.
I'm just surprised they aren't getting nailed for the alleged blatant asset theft.
14Ark has cryopods which do the same thing mechanically, the only major difference being that you don't visually throw them. If you use the vague wording on the patents surrounding pokemon's box mechanics, it falls easily under there, since you are storing a captured creature in a digital storage.
Nintendo is the KING of frivolous patents. They've lost cases on it before, and with palworld being a sony interest, I don't think the usual financial bullying nintendo brings to the table is going to cut it on this one. They need an airtight case and their vague patents (and recent history trying to patent THE LOADING SCREEN and vehicle speed matching for player characters with totk being denied) is a bad look for them in a courtroom. Like the US, the holder of a patent in Japan needs to file suits swiftly to protect the patent, or they risk losing cases (like this one. See "laches defense").
Palworld is back in the top 100 global bestsellers today.
17Capcom or one of those patented loading screen mini-games and it's the dumbest, most antisocial thing to keep other people from using such an broad and useful category of mechanic.
2
Arguably Ghostbusters (1984) is prior art for throwing a capsule and capturing 🤣
Edit: they even had a video game with the ghost trap.
15There are many games that had that mechanic before Arceus.
In particular, Craftopia (which is from the same developers of Palworld) had capsule devices that you can throw to enemies in a "virtual space" while characters "engage in combat" before Arceus was a thing.
Just because they wrote a patent does not make it enforceable... patents don't really mean anything until they are actually tested in court so they are just tools to try and scare people away whenever a company wants to bully with the prospect of a lawsuit.
I feel that Palworld is likely to win this, this actually is an idiotic move from Nintendo and a win for Palworld.. now they will get more publicity, perhaps another spike in sales, and they are finally given the opportunity to prove how they are in the right, so they can shut up all the naysayers who complained about it. I'm hoping all the paranoic empty claims about "blatant asset theft" will be settled once and for all.
6Agreed, guess this is unpopular opinion but palworld just looked like a copycat from the get-go, especially the capture mechanic. It is too similar imo.
1
Ahh I see, Nintendo has discovered the internet.
13Maybe if the pokémon company had done anything to advance their gameplay in the past 30 years people wouldn’t be so excited to try a better pokémon game. They should probably sue the developers of Ni No Kuni for also making a better pokémon game.
6I heard that Pocket Pair use relatively questionable methods to develop their games such as AI and literal copy-paste for their concept art which they then just alter.
But its more hearsay than everything else I guess.
1Please don't post hearsay. If you want to post something incriminating, take a second to verify it first. This is how bad rumors propagate, and as a society today it's a problem we're facing like never before. Do your part!
In this case you're completely wrong.
5People have supposedly ripped several models from both games and some seem to line up nearly 100%, while others obviously use parts of the model.
But yeah, I can't say I checked if they're valid videos or made to enrage people.
3Rage bait.
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Me looking at the thumbnail of this post: "ah electabuzz or something right?"
People in this thread: "it's totally different!!!"-4Not even what the lawsuit is about... It's the creature capture mechanisms that they feel infringed on.
3I loved gunning down the rival with my electabuzz
2