Took them a while. But like clockwork, Nintendo never misses a chance to be the villains.
Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, Inc.
Submitted 2 months ago by hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works to games@lemmy.world
https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/en/2024/240919.html
Comments
Caligvla@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.”
Literally Comic-Book Villain behavior.
GBU_28@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Doesn’t matter to them, when millions line up to see the next wacky thing Mario is up to
hal_5700X@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
We should play a game of guessing which patent(s) they’re gonna try to nail Palworld for infringement with.
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Half of those patents read like if they use vague enough language to justify patenting how computers work.
halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Welcome to Software Patents 101.
testuserpleaseupvote@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
msgomez06@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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
ImplyingImplications@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
My guess is the “Pokemon Box Storage” system since palworld stores pals in a palbox.
radix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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)
Shadow@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Is that the wrong link? This seems totally unrelated to Pokemon in boxes, and is more about multi console character storage systems.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 2 months ago
These can’t be real, they read like they were generated by an AI prompt.
testuserpleaseupvote@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Well, it makes me think that AI training was probably biased towards legal drivel like this, since it’s public facing, professional and probably even translated in multiple languages.
The student got so good that people think the teacher is imitating it.
Donjuanme@lemmy.world 2 months ago
No, that’s the pal-world-monster arts.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 2 months ago
Those are just abstract if I’m not mistaken. There should be more detailed specifications.
bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 month ago
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
svtdragon@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I think that’s setting the context for the claims they make, not a claim in itself.
june@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Since this was filed in Japan, it would have to be parents Nintendo own in Japan that are infringed and those don’t necessarily perfectly match those in the US
HelluvaKick@lemmy.world 2 months ago
xavier666@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Haven’t seen this meme for a while.
Tikiporch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
ludicolo@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Nah all that gamer malice will be dropped at the tip if 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.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sony is a shareholder and Microsoft has also supportted PocketPair, it will be interesting to see how that works out with Nintendo.
Takumidesh@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
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.
tee9000@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Copyright is bullshit! Fuck nintendo!
Scrolls to ai related lemmy post*
Copyright is sacred! Fuck openai!
Schmoo@slrpnk.net 1 month ago
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.
skulbuny@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor
Whose propaganda did you stick down blindly? Copyright is meant to foster and improve the commons and public domain, and only that.
tee9000@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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…
JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Had to wait until no one gave a shit about Palworld anymore
RxBrad@infosec.pub 2 months ago
Wait until they make all the money that was to be made on their game.
Then yoink all of that money.
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
grim@szmer.info 1 month ago
Wasn’t universal the plaintiff in the king kong case?
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Yup, my bad. Stoll, ficl nintendo
villainy@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
JiveTurkey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Fuck you Nintendo.
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So like…no mention of which patents?
Kolanaki@yiffit.net 2 months ago
They’re just gonna wing it and hope they have something.
JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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?
viking@infosec.pub 1 month ago
You can’t patent certain game mechanics. Would have to be an actual piece of code that was replicated.
sumguyonline@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 2 months ago
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.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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.
Asditionally, 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, ahooting, etc. are not elements that can be patented as they are necessary for FPS games in general, but some kind of specitic 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.
jordanlund@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Only surprise here is “Why did it take so long?”
Shadow@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Gotta wait until palworld has made a bucket of money for Nintendo to point at, claim damages, then try to take.
SlippiHUD@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s kinda surprising they didn’t sue over the much less legally grey IP infringements.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Nintendo: Can we sue them over the designs
Lawyer: Not really
…
Lawyer: But we can sue them anyway
Ashtear@lemm.ee 2 months ago
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.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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?
isyasad@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 1 month ago
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.
bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
BruceTwarzen@lemm.ee 1 month ago
And every pal has a badly drawn moustache
mightyfoolish@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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?”
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
bitwolf@lemmy.one 1 month ago
That could track because Nintendo hasn’t gone after Moonstone island either and that uses food / barns to store captured “spirits”.
meliaesc@lemmy.world 1 month ago
TemTem is probably just further down on the to-sue list.
aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I agree, but 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.
Tattorack@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
testuserpleaseupvote@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s some Tauros-shit (sue me). I hope the Japanese legal system can see that.
AceFuzzLord@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It’ll be hard to see that when their vision will be blocked by stacks of yen.
TriflingToad@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I like how they go 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.
Underwaterbob@lemm.ee 1 month ago
Because, like many, you can’t remember the name of that game, but just about everyone knows about Palworld.
FabledAepitaph@lemmy.world 1 month ago
I will continue to never give Nintendo any of my money on account of their litigiousness.
lowleveldata@programming.dev 2 months ago
Didn’t they like own a shit ton of patents? Which one are we talking about?
Fedizen@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Nintendo files suit against a Pocketpair of deez nuts.
ShinkanTrain@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
Unsurprising. Flew a little too close to the sun there fellas.
BigBenis@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Obligatory fuck Nintendo!
mesamunefire@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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…
ampersandrew@lemmy.world 2 months ago
None of those made hundreds of millions of dollars.
RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Digimon did, right? Why didn’t they ever go after that?
TeoTwawki@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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 ibtained could be nonsense, they just have to power to bend someine over a chair because they felt like it.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world 2 months ago
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?
june@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
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.
p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Actually ARK does this with cryopods.
Blackmist@feddit.uk 1 month ago
World of Warcraft’s pet capture system was actually very similar to Pokemon, including better traps with better chances of success.
GuillaumeGus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
I’m sorry, it’s mostly humanoid furries now with the starter Pokémon…
olafurp@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Nintendo is making a case that the use of capsules to capture and carry creatures is their IP.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world 1 month ago
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.
JustZ@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Does patent mean something else there?