Game mechanic patents are such an unbelievable joke it's hard to understand how any court could take them seriously. "Yes your honor. As you can see, we own the exclusive rights to the idea of throwing a ball at a creature in a video game."
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2024
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I'm always happy to remind everyone that your childhood didn't have minigames during loading screens because it was a patented game mechanic!
That one really pisses me off. It's such a good idea and would have been applicable to almost every game.
Without pokemon I would not come up with it though.
Wait, so the patents Nintendo is suing them for breaching were only filed... months after Palworld was already wildly successful?
Admittedly my understanding of patents is pretty rudimentary but I thought you had to apply before releasing the idea into the world.
If that was right the general concept of a container that you throw at a creature to capture it would be considered unpatentable after Pocket Monsters Red and Green released in February 1997. Of course they could trademark the specific markings of the pokeball but the general mechanic would be fair game.
There is a concept called prior art in patent law. Prior art is information about the invention that exists before filing, it can both help secure a patent as well as prevent someone filing a patent for someone else's existing invention.
"In a 3D space" rules out Pokemon Red. Still bullshit, though.
I'm not sure "in a 3D space" qualifies as an "inventive step" these days.
It definitely feels like something a person with ordinary skill in the art to which the invention pertains could easily have made on the basis of an invention or inventions that are already known.
Oh absolutely, it's asinine. But it does avoid Pokemon Red as prior art.
Japan is such a weird place that I wouldn't be surprised if it works
No, they were initially applied for in 2021.
Palworld had trailers featuring gameplay in 2021. Besides that, there are lots of games where you throw an object to add a character to your party. Including another earlier game by PocketPair called Craftopia. World of Warcraft added "battle pets" where you can throw a cage to catch animals and add them to your battle pets roster to fight against other trainers in 2012.
to add on to this, the video is dated in june 2021, and the patent show in japan wasnt registered until december 2021, which means palworld was already well on the way prior to them actually submitting these patents.
all three of the patents listed in the article have a japanese patent registered on 12/22/21. Palworld appears to have working gameplay mechanics by june of 2021 as shown by their announcement trailer.
That's not what this article says. Earliest application was March 5, 2024.
Palworld was released on Jan 18th, 2024, a month and a half beforehand.
Look at the actual patents, though. They list 2021 as the application date in Japan.
The patents being referred to by the article are not Japanese patents. Did you know Japan has its own court system?
Why are you lying? The article links to a google patents page, under the Japanese patents. There are US versions of these patents available to view, which the article didn't link to.
JP7545191 is a japanese patent. You can click one of the little blue US buttons to see the American equivalent. The same is true of the other two patents in question
Yeah, and take a look at the dates in what you linked.
What do the dates in them have to do with you getting that basic piece of information wrong? If you have a point to make, make it.
The court systems processed them on different dates. You're the one being belligerent and incorrect. Condescend on someone else, learn to read the stuff you link or at least make an attempt to understand it lol
Japan and the US have seperate requirements (first to file VS first to invent) for initially accepting a patent. Just because you can see them both on the USPTO website doesn't mean the patents are for both the US and Japan. In Japan, you can legally oppose a product before the patent is granted - in the US, that doesn't fly.
If you can't piece together what my point was with this info, you should probably stop commenting on patent cases until you do understand. You quite literally linked info showing the dates of the US patents that are after the release of palworld. Either you didn't read the thing you linked or you have some warped perception of patents being global.
at least make an attempt to understand it lol
That's what I'm trying to do, and the best you can manage to explain to me is "actually you're wrong." You have time to type out three paragraphs, but not enough time to explain that the patents the page links to, despite being apparently (as far as I can discern) filed with the Japanese patent office, are not Japanese patents?
I admit I don't really know what I'm talking about. The patent system is obtuse and virtually impossible to understand. But as far as I can tell, the patents referred to by the article are patents that were filed with the Japanese office. Can you explain what I'm getting wrong?
You quite literally linked info showing the dates of the US patents that are after the release of palworld.
I'm aware of that. The person you were responding to said "Look at the actual patents, though. They list 2021 as the application date in Japan." Do you want to explain why the website apparently shows an initial application date of 2021 in Japan? Maybe the google patents page is misleading. Maybe it's showing a related but not equivalent patent.
I really don't care about the process or validity of suing, nor do I care about the actual application date. I just want to know why it looks a lot like the patents the site links to are Japanese patents, and you're insisting that they're not.
You didn't read the article well and you didn't look up any info on patents whatsoever before jumping to "Why are you lying...?". You have a TON of unknown unknowns about the topic and it's actually impossible to explain it all while I'm on the toilet (which is where you're receiving this information from), but here's another few relevant tidbits:
The US patent office will help sustain foreign patents with a few requirements based on a few treaties, one of which is that the foreign patent was filed less than a year prior. Because the USPTO ostensibly exists to protect art made by artists, you can file an application for a patent within a year of filing a similar application in a different country. These were not recent enough. Another route is to apply for many countries at once through the patent cooperation treaty, which nintendo also did not do.
The person I was responding to was acting like the Japanese dates were a "gotcha" to the article. The article correctly states the US patent dates and links them, the related JP patents happen to be on the same page (but you have to click off of it to go there), and they have different application dates listed than the ones detailed in the article. It's literally not the patents being talked about in the article. In fact, the article goes into detail about the timing and how it's being used in the case: nintendo is seeking injunction money based on the time their patent was active in the US up to the time the suit was filed. You and the other poster are having a critical lack of information error, and a lot of that info is in the article. You confused yourself reading a site you don't understand outside the article.
The patent system sucks ass and exists almost wholly to protect megacorporations at this point. Copyright, likewise, has fallen into a state of disarray as we continue to write laws that are impossible to enforce for the individual without an entire legal team to guide them. While I personally think the whole system needs a rework, we are probably a long way as a society (societies, really) from identifying the problem or making meaningful change. In the meantime, learning how (and why) corporations "punch down" like this legally is our only option. Here's hoping this case does not go to a jury; I basically only see uninformed schlock from general discussion about patents and absolutely no initiative to learn about the patent system. It is almost never used to protect the creation of an individual and the public does not understand that was the original intent.
Fuck Nintendo
That "Palworld vs Pokemon comparison" thing has to be a joke, right? "These two creatures look similar, so obviously one of them is a blatant ripoff" and "these two creatures don't look similar, but obviously one of them is a blatant ripoff" lmao
Gonna buy another copy of Palworld just to spite Wesley Yin-Poole and Nintendo
I'm only a minor fan of Pokemon (in that I played them years ago and sometimes revisit an old one), and I've never played Palworld. I knew that it was accused of being similar with the catching critters and whatnot and always kinda scoffed at that idea too. But this article is the first time I've ever seen the designs side by side like that. Some of them are pretty egregious, imho.
Some of them are extremely similar, but there were over 3,000 existing Pokemon designs as of Palworld's release. It would be a statistical wonder if none of them looked similar, especially when our criteria can be as loose as "fire fox" and "Anubis"
Where are you getting 3,000 from?
https://www.cbr.com/just-how-many-pokmon-are-there-really/
Between original Pokemon, shinies, regional versions, and weird upgrades like gigantamax or whatever
I mean, shinies are a palette swap, no? I don't really know if I'd call that a different design.
Gonna buy another copy of Palworld just to spite Wesley Yin-Poole and Nintendo
doubt
I didn't say I'd buy it right now lol
Nintendo doesn't want competition
They signed a deal with Sony, too.