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News Release : Sep. 19, 2024 "Filing Lawsuit for Infringement of Patent Rights against Pocketpair, Inc."
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/en/2024/240919.html
Press release of Nintendo Co., Ltd.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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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
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.
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.
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
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.
Gotta wait until palworld has made a bucket of money for Nintendo to point at, claim damages, then try to take.
Nintendo: Can we sue them over the designs?
Lawyer: Not really, this shit is impossible to prove
...
Lawyer: But we can sue them anyway
Nintendo: Can we sue them over the designs?
Lawyer: Not really, this shit is impossible to prove
... starts closing the money briefcase
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.
I don't know if that's true, but most of those patents are incredibly iffy, they seem to describe basic functions of how videogames have worked since WoW.
They seem to have tried patenting having a player character that can walk, drive, and fly in a videogame on May 2, 2024.
It has to do with how the statute is written (I used to do comparative international IP policy research and analysis). Japanese works are given fairly wide latitude in creative sectors based on artistic intent. For example, you'll see knockoff brands all the time in anime or manga, but the intent is clearly world building (or parody), not appropriation for promotional use. That artistic intent standard is used in the courts. This is why all the side-by-side comparisons people here probably saw on Twitter when Palworld came out was more of an ethnocentric American approach. Plus, copyright infringement is frequently incidental and not the result of large investment (unlike patents), so, in a country that prefers to handle domestic disputes informally, these incidents are less likely to go to court.
As a country that more recently entered the world stage based on manufacturing, patent protection is simply going to be taken more seriously as part of the culture. And yes--while I don't have numbers--patent litigation does seem to get thrown out often when it comes to video games, at least the high-profile stuff, anyway. Here's an example between Koei Tecmo and Capcom since I was already on Variety.
That's some Tauros-shit (sue me). I hope the Japanese legal system can see that.
Patent infringement is a curious angle. Do we know what specific patent(s) they're claiming here?
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...