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131 comments
  • 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

  • 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?

  • Reminder that Nintendo is to Japan as Disney is to the USA.

    We can only speculate what patents are involved, might be legit might not but it doesn't have to be legit and the actual patent they obtained could be nonsense, they have the power to bend someone over a chair because they felt like it.

    Also reminder apple managed to patent a rectangle. what countries allow to be patented is often bullshit at best.

131 comments