Palworld Dev Reveals Patents at the Heart of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company Lawsuit — and How Much Money It’s Being Sued For
Palworld Dev Reveals Patents at the Heart of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company Lawsuit — and How Much Money It’s Being Sued For
Palworld developer Pocketpair has provided an update on Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s high-profile patent lawsuit against the company.
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."
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.
They patented basic shooter controls and having a mount, things they lifted from other games!
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.
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.
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"
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.