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.
Throws ball at dog
Nintendo:
Even as a dedicated pokemon fan that hasn’t played Palworld (the butchering mechanics don’t really appeal to me)…
I really hope Nintendo loses this, and loses it HARD. I think that some actual competition would be really healthy for the pokemon franchise, giving them an actual impetus to make sure their games are high-quality and well-supported and don’t pursue serious anti-consumer practices.
Godspeed, Palworld. Counting on you.
The unfortunate part is that Nintendo is likely going to win it. It’s a Japanese company, in Japanese court, and the courts are hilariously biased in favor of Japanese companies. Nintendo has literally never lost a lawsuit in Japan against a foreign defendant, because the Japanese courts are set up to trust Japanese claimants more than foreigners by default.
Japan has a lot of cute media and a reputation for being polite, but the harsh reality is that the country is one of the most racist in the world. They get away with it because the culture is built upon being polite. But under that polite exterior, there is a lot of overt racism. Japan is one of the most homogenous populations in the world, with 99.8% of the population being native Japanese. That remaining 0.2% includes all of the tourists, visa holders, immigrants, half-Japanese children, etc… Japan has a saying, which roughly translates to “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” In a society that is focused on blending in, immigrants stick out.
Imagine how bad the White Power rhetoric would be if America were 99.8% white, and that other 0.2% (not 2%. Two tenths of 1%) of non-white people included tourists, immigrants, and naturalized citizens. In a packed 20,000 person stadium, that would only be 40 non-white people in the crowd.
I hadn’t realized the court was within Japan. Does Palworld conduct business inside the country? I’d think if it was never released there, Japan would have no basis to pull them into a foreign case.
Pocketpair (Palworld dev) is also a Japanese company.
The butchering mechanic is mostly there as a joke. After you do it once, you unlock a much better and friendlier version of recycling your duplicate Pals.
Oh… I never butchered because that just seemed wrong. Is there any way to just get to the friendlier version without butchering?
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
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…
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
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
No one tell Nintendo about Yariteme Mesubuta…
