I just filed a patent for white rice so now all you rice eaters owe me $20
I don’t care if that isn’t how IP law works, should a thought about that before eating all that rice ya dingus
Patent the Japanese government and then proceed to overthrow it in a lawsuit.
I’m gonna patent the doohickey and sue the guy who shot Shinzo Abe
Rooting for Palworld devs, I can think of several examples of prior art.
Patents don’t protect art
Edit: ok, apparently “prior art” might be a phase in US patent law. I don’t quite understand what it means. In my country patents protect functions, not expressions of ideas (art)
Worth reading the article, but for the TL:drs and comment readers:
- A patent attorney has narrowed down the list of potential candidates that could be central to Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair to 28 patents.
- Out of those, one particular intellectual property describing creature-capture mechanics was labeled as a “killer patent” that would be difficult not to infringe when making a game with monster-taming elements.
- The said property is part of a recently approved patent family consisting of three more patents, all of which were approved mere weeks before Nintendo and The Pokemon Company sued Pocketpair.
If this is really Nintendo’s strategy, they’re going to be hosed, even in Japanese courts. Pokemon isn’t even the first game with these mechanics, Dragon Quest (a Square Enix property) and Shin Megami Tensei (an Atlas property) had the mechanic and came out before Pokemon, plus the original Pokemon released over 20 yeares ago.
Don’t we tame and capture Yoshi? Heh
By throwing an item at it? Patents are very specific
If they only were awarded the patents recently, could they even still be used to site patent infringement on a game that was made and released well before Nintendo/Pokemon Co. got the patent(s)? I could have sworn these were NOT retroactive…
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This patent was first submitted in late July 2024 and granted the following month, after Nintendo and The Pokemon Company asked for an accelerated review process.
What the fuck - so, they’re claiming infringement on a work that was released before they ever submitted their patent? How is that allowed? Are you telling me a company can wait until another company releases a similar product, then apply for a patent for something they used, then claim infringement? I knew patents were fucked, but I didn’t realize they were that fucked.
I found this but found after reading it a bit I didn’t want to put in the effort to understand it lol
yea that sounds nasty
just don’t patent anything, other companies build a product around an unpatented idea, then you patent it and sue them? now their entire product is ruined??
this makes no sense, that would mean the optimal play is to not patent anything until someone else starts doing it
Not in tbe US it’s not.
An existing implementation would be prior art and make it EXTREMELY easy to get the patent invalidated.
How is that allowed?
Well it’s not, you aren’t supposed to be able to get a patent for something that already exists. But you know, corruption
It’s not. In fact you know how this kind of patent gets invalidated, by pointing out what’s know as prior art. Things that did “this” before that patent was filed. So Palworlds and any other game that involves capturing a creature. This “killer patent” won’t stand up in Court unless the Japanese Court is entirely different than the US and German Courts.
JP courts are corpo jokes and their IP laws are even big clown shoe than US.
I take extra pleasure pirating JP product, fuck the corporate trash
Nintendo’s stagnated and has become a patent troll
as someone that used to be a fan I’m sad as it’s hard to be hyped for any of their games when they’re widely known for pulling these kinds of scummy tactics time and time again
indies be dammed, it’s too much of a risk to make Nintendo-inspired games let alone direct fan-games
Nintendo has always been an underhanded bully. This isn’t new.
Ya their patent crap precedes year 2000
It’s a shame you can’t support nintendo’s developers while excluding their legal department. Oh well, the high seas mean I still get to enjoy what I want to
People can’t even make a mod that requires the base game to work.
Does JP patent law not allow for prior art?
JP patent law is fucked.
JP law is fucked. I heard you could get sued for leaving a bad review at a restaurant
Japan is also one of the few countries where you aren’t assumed to be innocent until proven guilty. If you get arrested for a crime you have tl prove your innocence, which is why Japan has a conviction rate of over 99%
that’s pretty fucked if true
Nintendo…not even pirated.
Ugh, the suspense… When will we even get to know what the accusations are about? Is this Japan or Kafka’s Trial?
