I don't think they sued previously, at least that's in the articles if you check it
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They never sued before and I don't think they made the claim they would, people we're saying nintendo probably would because of how similar it was and that probably gets assumed as nintendo wanted to sue or said they would, they never did till this point as far as I know. I mean the resemblance is clearly there down to the art style, so it's not unfounded, like palworld had 50 other design choices and they still picked pokemon inspired. However I could be wrong but I read something about this not being enough to break the law in Japan or something along those lines, so I don't know if they have a case here, but imo,
I mean if I made a game about a guy whos the strongest of them all and he has a big V on his chest instead of an S for superman, and then some billionaire who plays hero cause his uncle died or something dressing up as a lemur, and then I copy a few more marvel/dc whatever characters I'm pretty sure just because I change their name and letter that's enough to say it's not copyright.
Looking at palworld no one is gonna sit here and say they didn't blatantly copy Latios and Latias amongst many other ones because the resemblances are too similar for too many, there was too much inspiration drawn imo.
I mean they didn't even try. However I do also think nintendo can't just sue for similar designs to these unless they're mass copied like palword died maybe, simply because were you to try and think of some of these on your own, you'd also come up with some similar designs I think.
TLDR: Nintendo should lose this fight imo, because copyrighting something like this sucks for everyone and creativity in general. People should be able to draw whatever the f they want and charge money for it. Nintendo shouldn't be able to draw 1000 animal lookalikes an then say any resemblance to them is infringement. I have no respect for a company that thinks they're that original, there's 8 billion people in the world, if everyone had to draw some cartoonish animals I bet you some will look alike. Other things might constitute infringement though depending on how much was copied.
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i feel like they are late. plus when palworld first released pokemon was swarmed by people reporting palworld to them. and they finally came out with a statement saying they were not going to take legal action cuz there was nothing similar enough to do so. they cant backtrack on that now
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Makes me wonder a little bit if these patents are even pokemon related or not. Nintendo probaly has thousands of patents for stuff that never saw the light of day, so until more information comes out it could be anything.
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the big thing before was creature design, and some mechanics being overly similar(but mostly creature design). Aka a potential copyright/trademark case.
will be curious which patents were infringed upon.
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Knowing how litigious Nintendo tends to be they'll probably try to fight this to the bitter end, I hope they lose tho, otherwise they'll be setting a worrying precedent.
What I'm surprised about is that it took them this long to get around to sue.
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By just taking a glance at the filling date of some of their patents one has to wonder how many patents they may loose by doing this.
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They hoard patents so who knows, I'm not a lawyer, just a worried gamer that knows that every time Nintendo goes feral and starts sending their hit squads lawyer teams bad things happen.
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I was involved in some lets call it patent disagreements during some of my previous engineering works for companies (mostly providing technical documentation to the patent specialists).
The most important things i remember:
- If you can prove that you did something before a patent was filed the patent holder can loose its patent.
- If you file a patent and somebody can prove that the filed patent was allready shown to public (no matter how small the audiance was) you can loose your patent.
- Allways be carefull before you go against a competitor for patent violation.
But as you i am no expert and patents work different in different regions maybe even for software/games.
Let´s see how it turns out.
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To be completely honest I'm still baffled to this day that patenting game mechanics is even allowed, it'd be like if a writer comes up with a narrative device and then for a couple of decades nobody else can use it or even iterate on the idea. I'm ok with someone claiming a specific implementation of a concept, but the concept itself feels like a bit of a stretch. And I remember that Nintendo did once patent an "insanity meter" from one of their Gamecube horror games that actually prevented other developers from doing something too similar.
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To add on point 2: the audience can even be zero. As long as the public had in theory the possibility to look relevant information up, the patent cab be cancelled/not granted.
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If they win, Dragon Quest's knocking Nintendo's door next.
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I'm not an expert, but note that this is about patents, not trademarks. Trademarks are about how something looks (e.g., Pikachu or a Tesla car). Patents are about inventions (e.g., a new vaccine or a 5G network emitter).
So I wonder what this is about. In gaming, a patent could be a new game mechanic, like e.g., the Nemesis system from Shadow of War/Mordor, but I have no idea what kind of patents Nintendo has ...
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Some resources
The Pokemon Company | Game Freak, Inc | Nintendo
I feel this one is a good potential candidate, but it could honestly be anything and with so much legalese, it's just best to come back to this months down the line once it is actually all known.
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i did not read the whole patent because i am not proficient enough in english to understand the fine distinctions that sometimes lead to a patent beeing approved.
But if this is the patent in question how can they even have it? At first glance it describes things we have allready seen in games before the patent was filed. Maybe there is some fine distiction to the generall allready seen things but that would make the patent very nichee.
It is sure interesting how this will turn out.
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Have no fear, even if you had more English proficiency, it would still be near impossible to understand for an average person like myself. But what I will grant is I think we don't get the entire information with the sites I've listed. Like they reference figures and I see none.
However, I dug a little deeper and found google patents does cover it. When looking at those (past around image 9 or so), you can see a bit about how they might use this one.
But again you'd have to be a legal expert to know whether they got it off of a very specific version of this sequence of events and if it can apply to PalWorld. However, I doubt Pokemon went into this without feeling they were rock solid so hopefully the settlement fee isn't too bad and everyone can move on down the line.
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Vaccines can't be patented I think? Should be same as new health treatment methods, which are excluded
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Instead of suing people and companies Nintendo should instead make some new games maybe something about a plumber (that doesn't plumb) saving a princess - that hasn't been done before , right?
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In the world of tabletop RPGs, it is routinely said that you can't copyright mechanics (the number-oriented rules of the game). That's why the recent Star Wars RPGs use dice with runes on them, instead of numbers.
I'm not sure how or even if that might apply to video game mechanics.
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What? I can understand suing for copyright infringement, but patents? Notable that they don't state what is being infringed.
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im pretty sure they would have won even a copyright one .
the only way ,they could have gone out of this ,by saying the Pals are Ai generated ,but by doing that they would infringe on Steam TOS ,that you need to clariy the Help of AI before the release of the game .Steam probably wouldnt even take action i assume ,because there is money to be made .
Some of the Pals have just to many pokemon traits and they feel just like mix and match .
Overall i dont like trademarks abuse either ,but thats just how my gut feeling is .
Patent? ,i assume the pokeball could be a patent and a trademarkt issue at the same time .
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https://store.steampowered.com/developer/pocketpair/#browse
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623730/Palworld/
https://www.pcgamer.com/games/rpg/nintendo-is-suing-the-palworld-developer-claiming-it-infringes-on-patents/
https://www.pocketpair.jp/news/news16
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