Pocketpair goes on to say that Palworld has been claimed to infringe on three patents held by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company and that part of the damage is required as compensation.
The first patent is one that most had guessed to be part of the case, as 7545191 refers to the process of capturing and befriending Pokemon, which Palworld apes with its Pal Spheres. The other two patents that are included in the lawsuit, 7493117 and 7528390 haven’t been found and detailed just yet, but they’re likely also mechanics in Pokemon games that are replicated in Palworld.
The most disgusting part of this is that all of these patents were filed this year, meaning their only purpose is for giving Nintendo an avenue to sue Pocket Pair.
Wouldn’t that make them super easy to knock down though? Pal World can just open it’s records to show Nintendo’s process wasn’t novel.
Yes, if you ignore the fact that Nintendo has very deep pockets and Japanese courts are very bribable.
Nintendo is going hard against palworld because palworld is funded by Sony this is just the next move in a 30 year chess match
Yeah, there was a great video on YouTube I saw a few days ago that went over why Sony is backing Pocket Pair, why Nintendo is making this case about patents, why that’s a massive risk for Nintendo, and why Nintendo is willing to take that risk.
It largely seemed to come down to the Nintndo-Sony rivalry that started when Nintendo backed out of the SNES era deal to create the PlayStation. Nintendo is trying to crush Sony’s potentially viable competitor to their largest franchise and are making the case a patent case because that’s the only route they can pursue. If they lose, Nintendo stands to lose those patents.
That’s the same one I watched
Its a IP proxy war now…
Throws ball at dog
Nintendo:
Saw videos/articles online that this was the “end of gamedev” or whatever.
While patents for games are shit, theyve been around a long time and are hard to enforce. Palworld made it incredibly easy for one of the most ruthless companies to go after them. I expected they waited to see the final game before taking action, and until palworld made a ridiculous amount of money.
I’ve worked on Pokemon clones that are commercially available, and while they didn’t sell as much as palworld, they took a bit more care designing around stuff
How tf does Coromon get away with it? I’d say that’s waaaay more of a rip-off than Palworld. E: typo
Coromon didn’t get a huge media deal that could have the potential undermine the Pokemon franchise. Nintendo going after them would be just needless friction since patent lawsuits are hellish
I also think location has to do with it. The dev team behind Coromon are in Europe while both Nintendo and the Palworld devs are in Japan.
From what I understand from a previous article, japanese patent laws can be quite strict.
What I always hear is that companies will send C&D letters to small ventures, because it creates precedence. Without that, a company loses the right to sue.
I wonder how true that actually is.
That’s more trademark law, not patent or copyright. At least in the US, I don’t know if Japan is different.
Funny you mention THAT game.
Not that I have anyyy insider knowledge, but great care was taken to avoid very specific things. Also who knows, had coromon exploded in popularity, maybe Nintendo would have bothered.
Probably just not big enough. Pokemon-like games are very common, palworld was just hugely successful and a lot of the media coverage for it was comparing it to Pokemon.
Coromon is only a ripoff in the same way that any scrolling platformer is a ripoff of Super Mario Bros. building off the basic chassis of existing games to make new ones is a practice as old as videogames itself and why genres exist. the difference is that Palworld is full to the brim with monsters that can be difficult to tell at a glance from existing Pokémon- look at this article’s embedded image, that’s just a Wooloo with horns on it’s hind legs- whereas Coromon, Digimon, Dragon Quest Tamers, Yokoi Watch, Cassette Beasts, and anything else in the genre aren’t ripoffs and are even available on Nintendo consoles
i know that’s not the angle Nintendo is using in court, but it’s certainly the reason why they’re in court in the first place while ignoring the plethora of older games that would also clearly violate those patents
I disagree. There are a number of Coromon creatures that also heavily resemble some pokemon. I mean, it’s to be expected, there are only so many variations of creature designs before they begin being similar to each other, especially with how long Pokemon has been at it, having like 1000+ creatures now.
Anyway, Nintendo is a greedy shitbag of a company. I love many of their games, but they’re the absolute worst when it comes to being extremely litigious and/or consumer friendly. I truly hope they lose this legal battle
do you have any examples? i can’t think of any Coromon that resemble Pokemon aside from sharing a base animal, whereas a number of Pokemon look closer to specific Pals than they do to their own regional or gender variants
Sega and RGG just standing there daring Nintendo to try shit.
Its so fucked up that Nintendo allegedly owns copyright to CONCEPTS hope they loose it.
It’s not copyright, it’s patents…
(I do also hope that they lose because ingame mechanics being patented is bullshit)
They had some asshole payents back in the day, like npc giving quests IIRC and the directional cross.
Sony had the “stand up and say mcdonalds to continue the game” IIRC.
Is this US only? Can’t imagine it would roll in the EU.
I think its not even US but Nintendo lobbies so massively that they can uphold Japanese copyright Circus in other countries.
In all sane countries its not possible to parent or copyright a idea or concept just a processes of doing something.
Someone owned a patent for minigames on the loading screen which is why we did not get thise after Broken Sword. At least that expired, so now for example we got Mario Party Jamboree doing it again.
How have the patents not been found when we know the numbers? Is looking up patents that messed up of a process?
They’re Japanese patents, so maybe they’re already circulating in Japanese media and haven’t been translated yet.
Alternatively, maybe the Japanese Patent Office requires you to follow some bureaucratic process to get a copy: like you have to be a lawyer and it takes 4-6 weeks to get your reply. I don’t know, but Japan just finally got rid of its last laws requiring floppy disks for certain processes a few years back, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility
I’m sure we’ll hear the details soon.
I had a floppy disc but I took a pill and now it’s a hard drive and it’s been more than four hours and I don’t know what to do, please send help
No one tell Nintendo about Yarisute Mesubuta…
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