Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, Inc.

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?
- 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.
  
  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.
  Edit. And now I think about it, the mobile game of Rick and Morty was very much a reskin of Pokemon.
  
  Actually ARK does this with cryopods.
  
  World of Warcraft's pet capture system was actually very similar to Pokemon, including better traps with better chances of success.
- I'm sorry, it's mostly humanoid furries now with the starter Pokémon...
- 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.
  
  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".
  
  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.
- 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
  
  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.
  
  Just because it has a resemblance to pokemon doesn't make it pokemon. The gameplay is completely different.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- Nintendo is making a case that the use of capsules to capture and carry creatures is their IP.
  
  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.
  
  Does patent mean something else there?

Took them a while. But like clockwork, Nintendo never misses a chance to be the villains.
- 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.
  
  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."~~ make themselves a lot of money by doing nothing but make a lawsuit to steal their earnings."
- Doesn't matter to them, when millions line up to see the next wacky thing Mario is up to, for the 55th time

We should play a game of guessing which patent(s) they're gonna try to nail Palworld for infringement with.
- Half of those patents read like if they use vague enough language they can justify patenting how computers work.
  
  Welcome to Software Patents 101.
- 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
- 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.
- 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.
  
  Those are just abstract if I'm not mistaken. There should be more detailed specifications.
  
  No, that's the pal-world-monster arts.
- Since this was filed in Japan, it would have to be patents Nintendo own in Japan that are infringed and those don't necessarily perfectly match those in the US
- 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.

- Haven't seen this meme for a while.
  
  It took a while to catch up

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

Congrats Nintendo, I'm done with you. SNES, Gameboy, N64, GameCube, Wii, Switch, and now done for good. Cantankerous old dinosaur of a company that has lost touch with the world.
- Yeah. I love their games and liked their hardware, but I just can't morally justify sending money into Nintendo anymore.
- adieu

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.

Fuck you Nintendo.

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 game was on track to be forgotten
  Game is just outside the top 50 on steam and had a major content release at the end of June. This 'game is dying'-because-it-didn't-indefinitely-sustain-player-counts-in-the-top-10 meme is dumb as hell.
  
  It's a pocketpair thing though as far as "abandoning" a game. As a craftopia player I know all too well how they start off and then drag their feet with minimal input after a certain time. It's one thing I was worried about with palworld before it even came out. :/
  
  Well statistically speaking like only 1% of their peak player count at launch was still playing the game.
  It doesn't do bad on the top ranking out of all games on Steam, but it didn't do great anymore either.
- 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.
  
  Sony is a shareholder and Microsoft has also supportted PocketPair, it will be interesting to see how that works out with Nintendo.
  
  The steam deck didn't exist when the switch came out, it innovated and filled a niche that turned out to be a severely underserved segment of the gaming market.
  Nintendo struck gold with the switch, and a 'switch 2' likely isn't going to cut it.
  It's not like Nintendo is infallible, remember the console before the switch was the Wii u.

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...

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
  
  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.

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.

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.

That's some Tauros-shit (sue me). I hope the Japanese legal system can see that.
- It'll be hard to see that when their vision will be blocked by stacks of yen.

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?
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  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.
- That could track because Nintendo hasn't gone after Moonstone island either and that uses food / barns to store captured "spirits".
- 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.
- 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.
  
  I'm not sure why. TemTem, and a number of smaller projects like it, are basically exact copies of Pokemon and have been around far longer, some with succesfull kickstarter campaigns.
  I remember Nintendo being RUTHLESS when people over at GBATemp tried making a smash bros clone for the NDS... For free.

Stop buying Nintendo. They can't create quality new IP's, just rehashes over and over, at this point she ain't got a peach, bowser mashed it into a pie, and Mario's eating it for breakfast, lunch, an after dinner snack.
- The problem is they're such a large and recognizable company that they could probably switch to making and selling malware and everyone would still buy it without thinking twice. Humanity is full of idiots.

Didn't they own like a shit ton of patents? Which one are we talking about?

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.

- 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.

I will continue to never give Nintendo any of my money on account of their litigiousness.

Patent infringement is a curious angle. Do we know what specific patent(s) they're claiming here?

Obligatory fuck Nintendo!

Nintendo files suit against a Pocketpair of deez nuts.

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?

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.

Unsurprising. Flew a little too close to the sun there fellas.