Palworld maker vows to fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers

2 years ago by moe90 to c/technology

Palworld developer Pocketpair has responded to this morning's dramatic decision by Nintendo to file a patent infringeme…
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Egg_Egg 24 points 2 years ago

Half of Pokémon are heavily inspired by artist's (who are not affiliated with Nintendo) illustrations of popular Yokai (Japanese mythological creatures). The rest are simply animals with very generic additions. "It's a cow but bipedal" "It's a kangaroo but with horns" "It's a pigeon but... actually yeah it's just a pigeon. No difference."

How can you copyright/patent that? It's hardly original.

I say this as someone who grew up loving Pokémon.

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jeff 23 points 2 years ago

It's a patent case. It has nothing to do with the creative design of the games.

But yes. Every pokemon is copyrighted. Every pal is copyrighted. (In the US) All creative work is automatically copyrighted to the creator.

You can't copyright "a standing lizard with a small flame on its tail" but you can copyright Charmander. If you copy enough elements that a lay person can't distinguish the original and the copy then it opens it up for a copyright claim.

None of that is relevant in this case.

A patent is to protect a specific invention from being copied. In this case, there is an innovative game mechanic that Nintendo patented has that Palworld copied. The speculation is with throwing an item that captures a character that fights other characters in a 3d space.

The patent is dumb. Personally I don't think it is innovative or special enough to be patented. Patenting software or game mechanic are dumb anyway.

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phx 3 points 2 years ago

And hopefully something that they'll be able to find reams of prior art that precede the patent

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MisterFrog 1 point 2 years ago

How long do patents last for anyway? Pokemon being caught in balls must be many, many decades old by this point.

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AdmiralRob 9 points 2 years ago

It's not for copyright infringement, it's for patent infringement. Apparently when they made Legends Arceus, Nintendo patented the idea of pointing the camera at a monster and throwing stuff at it.

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fishbone 4 points 2 years ago

That'd be pretty funny if that was the case, because Craftopia (Pocketpair's first game, released before Legends Arceus was announced) also did the monster collection mechanic in the exact same way as Palworld.

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Capricorn_Geriatric 2 points 2 years ago

Wasn't there a N64 Pokemon game (Pokemon Safari?) Where you take photos of pokemon?

I guess Nintendo quashed its own patent.

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Mwa 2 points 2 years ago

Oh yeah yokai I seen that in touhou

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