Obviously this depends on the exact details of the patents, which are all in Japanese, as well as the specifics of Japanese patent laws.
However, patents only last for 20 years, and they are undermined by public disclosure before filing. The first Pokemon game came out more than 20 years ago. However^2 not all of the features in the patents were present in the original games. All 3 patents were first filed in 2021, well after many of these features were established.
The first patent is about aiming something and entering into a fight mode. This wasn’t in the original game. Aiming at enemies and entering a fight mode almost certainly existed before Pokemon (Final Fantasy perhaps). Furthermore, Palworld doesn’t really have a fight mode - it isn’t a turn based game but real time. Throwing a sphere is just one way to start a “battle” but there is no mode change between “explore” and “battle” modes because they are functionally the same in Palworld. Pokemon Go and Pokemon Let’s Go Pikachu/Eevee, which were all around in 2018, would seem to amount to public disclosure that undermines this patent.
The second patent has more detail about catching Pokemon outside of battles. This might have some elements of Palworld gameplay in it. However, again we have prior art that predates the patent.
The third patent is about riding characters. This has certainly existed in other games before Pokemon and before this patent. Off the top of my head, World of Warcraft had you riding mounts, Final Fantasy had you riding Chocobos, and Mega Man let you ride Rush.
However the big issue with all of these is that these challenges are always better off done before the patent is granted. With the patents established it is a massive uphill struggle trying to get them withdrawn. Given that each charge is only for $33,000, so about $100,000 total, I expect a settlement will be reached instead of going on this fight.
Looking it up, Palworld was announced in 2021, but not released (under early access) until 2024. However they were apparently designing the game back in 2020, if not earlier.
People need to stop supporting Nintendo at all. They’re lawsuit happy assholes who have been doing everything they can to piss away any good will they might have had. They’re the only game company out there who refuses to make enough of many of their products, like their mini NES and SNES, to meet demand because then its “exclusive”, they are the only company trying to destroy all type of emulation for Nintendo consoles, and they’re the only company who seems to actually want their older games to disappear into the ether. Edit: Oh and they fucking refuse to put their games on sale or lower their prices years afterwards. BoTW is still 60 bucks even though it’s 7 and a half years old. Fucking insane.
Valve to my knowledge doesn’t engage in patent trolling and so it’s not all hardware manufacturers.
And even with Sony and Microsoft? Do they engage in bottom of the barrel patent trolling? If anything MS has definitely been on the receiving end of patent trolls. Do they go after people who stream/make video content with their games?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not defending Sony or Microsoft. But it’s a bit strange to engage in volunteer PR for a company just because you’re a fan of the Mario series (not saying this applies to you, but this is not an unreasonable statement with respect to Nintendo fans in general).
Absolutely not true. All the console creators, sure, but not all developers. There are so many good developers, especially indie.
There’s issues with purchasing anything in capitalism. We have to deal with that as long as that’s the case though. It doesn’t mean Nestlé isn’t significantly worse than other campanies though, for example. There are different degrees of bad, and Nintendo is basically the top for gaming.
trying to destroy all type of emulation for Nintendo consoles
Only emulation used by others. They’re happy to kang all’ the ROMs and emulators off’ a site before destroying it for everyone else, then not even sell most of the damn things. Absurd. There’s nothing good about that, not even for Nintendo themselves.
Sorta true. Nintendo has been monetizing emulation for years, ever since they started releasing “virtual console” games on the Wii web shop.
The Switch now offers NES/SNES games as a benefit of their online service, and has released a handful of games as standalone releases which are literally just nicely-packaged emulators (Mario Sunshine and Galaxy 1/2 bundle for example)
If emulation and “piracy” of old consoles is allowed, then Nintendo fears it won’t be able to charge as much to repackage identical technology as full-price game releases.
Part of the reason is because most people don’t notice the lawsuits or think this is boilerplate legal stuff that happens in the background all the time. They’re too distracted by the entertainment side of things.
We had a history before patents/copyright were enforced. It was pretty brutal for anyone trying to make a living with their creations. Take a look and see if you want to return to that.
yeah now its brutal for anyone trying to make a living and excellent for anyone who already inherited a living and has more money than they could use in multiple lifetimes. I’d hate to go back to when it was just brutal for anyone trying to make a living.
Imagine if any company could just copy an indie game and scale it up/polish a bit and get all the sales.
You’re describing the entire mobile games industry. You think all those top apps in the app stores are 100% original? No. They copied other games.
Also, patents have nothing to do with that. Software is covered by copyright.
Furthermore, “back in the day” manufacturing was expensive and required huge factories to build stuff (in quantity). The barrier to entry was enormous! People were mostly uneducated and there was not much in the way of “shared engineering knowledge”. Ten thousand people could look at a car engine and have no friggin clue how it worked. That’s why patents were necessary: Disclosure
These days disclosure has become irrelevant. Any engineer can look at an invention or product and figure out both how it works and how it was made. At the very least, they can figure out a way to make it. Just look at all the Youtube channels where every day people are making complicated machines, parts, and electronics! The mysteries are gone. Disclosure is unnecessary.
Since the entire point of patents was disclosure why do we still need them?
So you’re cool if some other developer makes a knockoff of Palworld and sells it, right? Cause that knock off developer has to make a living, right? Where’s your empathy lie? With the Palworld developer or the knock off?
I don’t need to come up with any revolutionary ideas, the open source folks are already creating without patenting their creations
Here’s a revolutionary idea: universal basic income. No need to prevent other people from monetizing your idea if you don’t need to monetize your idea in the first place
I don’t need to come up with any revolutionary ideas, the open source folks are already creating without patenting their creations
The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP. As in, they can afford to give away lots of time and effort because they make their money with IP. If IP were to be eradicated as you’re proposing, all those contributions to Open Source by those largest contributors would evaporate. Here’s the largest Open Source contributors from 2017-2020.
The largest contributors to Open Source make their money from patents and other IP.
The data in that video is (probably) accurate but your statement is completely wrong: In that list only Intel makes anything but trivial amounts of money from patents. In fact, Microsoft, Google, and Docker have famouslylost shittons of money thanks to patents. They basically siphoned money out of those companies into the pockets of lawyers and provided absolutely no benefit to society.
For fuck’s sake: Features were removed from Android because of software patents!
Not only that but Google makes almost all of its money from advertising, not “IP”. Same for Meta which is oddly missing from the graph (even though they contribute to and maintain a ton of FOSS stuff).
Then let’s talk about #1: Redhat. They absolutely would be 1000% behind banning software patents. It’s nothing but trouble for them.
I’d also like to note that Microsoft has been very much in favor of software patents since they were invented by the courts (remember: no legislation added software as a category of patentable subject matter: They exist as a result of court rulings!) because they thought they would put an end to open source software (see: Halloween documents). However, software patents have actually cost Microsoft more than they ever helped the company! In short: They’re idiots. They opened a can of worms that’s kept them constantly under attack but because those worms also hurt their perceived enemies they’ve doubled down on their decision.
Software existed for decades without (software) patents and has innovated and evolved vastly more quickly than any other science. Then we created software patents and things actually started to slow down (because lawsuits take time and threaten to end great software before it even exists).
Software is already covered by copyright which is all that was necessary for some of the richest companies in the world to come into existence (e.g. Microsoft, Oracle). Software patents shouldn’t exist!
Why? Software patents are already covered by copyright. Anyone can write software and they automatically get assigned the copyright for it. The barrier to entry is basically zero since everyone has a computer and nearly anyone can learn to program by simply taking the time to do so.
I mean, I also don’t think patents should exist in general but there’s a pretty clear difference between software and things in the physical world. Software is “just math”. And I mean that literally: 100% of all software that exists can be reduced to math that you could–in theory–perform with a pencil and paper.
There’s a lot of reasons why software patents shouldn’t exist far beyond the scope of patents in general.
Copyright only prevents you from copying code, not copying the design. Patents are meant to protect design. I also agree that software patents shouldn't go beyond normal patents or protect overgeneralized stuff with prior art.
Patents are not the problem, they serve as a way to share the knowledge of a creation with everyone while protecting your company for a REASONABLE TIME to compensate for the RnD costs.
The problem is the distortion of the concept to fit late stage capitalism delights.
that’s the only hope, because Nintendo knows that as long as it goes to court, they can bleed out the palworld developers with endless legal attrition. I’m sure they know that these patents aren’t concrete; they’re just an easy way to drag people to court who can’t afford to fight back
the lawsuit accuses Keighin of streaming leaked Switch games, including this month’s Mario & Luigi: Brothership, ahead of release using emulation software as many as 50 times in the last two years. Nintendo is seeking $150,000 in damages for each instance of alleged copyright infringement.
Hilarious that the screenshot Kotaku use in the article is his social media post with his recommendations of what sites to download the games from.
Kinda the reason i dont like kotaku tbh. They do such things very often and it always feel like they are taunting or flexing and it comes over as really douchy to me
kotaku.com
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