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Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

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Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#71

Post by Spagbol »

I found this explanation of Nintendo vs Palworld to be enlightening: https://youtu.be/8apzrwv75i0?feature=shared

There are many interesting points in this video for me but most saliently:

-Nintendo is not as litigious as it could be given how many possible infringements it could potentially persue

-It is well aware that it loses fan goodwill whenever it shuts down some innocent fangame, but the way that patent and copyright law is written it is apperently a significant risk diluting their brand if they don't take actions to protect it, so it is a balancing act they have to calculate

-Sony's backing of Palworld is the particularly alarming part for Nintendo that is likely spurring them into action in this case

This isn't a defense of Nintendo, but I think it's interesting to see some deeper systematic reasons for why they do what they do

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#74

Post by LocalH »

abc-1 wrote: post #8

This is a sign of the beginning of the end for them. When you’re rotten to the core you do things like this instead of actually innovating and creating new great products. It doesn’t end well long term.

They have a massive war chest. They're not going anywhere.

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#75

Post by jwagenet »

gamedever wrote: post #17

Blame the government. You shouldn't be allowed to patent game mechanics IMO. Nitnendo has (had) a patent on ghost cars (showing a ghost of your former performance in Mario Kart) Sega has (had) a patent on zooming between camera positions from Virtua Racing 1 Wizards of the Coast has a patent on card games similar to Magic the Gathering. I don't know what their actual patent is but I do know lots of companies paid the…

How is this different than patenting physical designs in practice? If someone develops a novel game mechanic there isn’t really a reason they shouldn’t be able to exclusively capitalize on it if someone else can patent something “irl”. If Nintendo thought ghost cars offer a compelling advantage over other racers, that seems valid to me.

The patent length is a separate issue altogether.

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#76

Post by atum47 »

talldayo wrote: post #61
atum47 wrote: post #36

Nintendo is a shitty company. They made some good games 30 years ago and that's it. All the shitty stuff they are pulling today makes me wish they fail more and more. Even back in the day they would do shitty things to third party developers, we just didn't knew about it. Sorry if this hurts your nostalgia but it is the truth. I'll try to mention the previous shitty thing they did that was covered by the news every t…

The top comment there pretty much sums it up nicely. Attacking Nintendo is like attacking Disney or Apple - they're a lifestyle brand. There are some people who spend thousands of dollars annually on their products and might feel irrationally invested in the business. Others might have insecurities or extreme dysfunctions they perceive to be "solved" by the brand. People are deeply entrenched in the concept of these…

Are they gonna go against Dragon Quest VIII? After playing for a while you met a crazy guy that runs a ring of monsters and he then encumbers you with capturing monsters all around the world and put them to compete against each other on the arena. Are the gonna go against Hogwarts? They also have a mechanic of capturing monsters around the world. There's probably other examples out there but those are the ones I could remember.

I'm awful at discussions because I cannot keep track of the facts. I tried to google it before writing this message but my brain is in another place. Nintendo fought and still fights pretty hard against emulators, roms and developers who creates them or even youtubers who post content about it, yet, they were caught selling emulators and roms to the public. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I saw a video from MVG about this. By the way, MVG was threaten by Nintendo himself.

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#77

Post by talldayo »

atum47 wrote: post #76
talldayo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The top comment there pretty much sums it up nicely. Attacking Nintendo is like attacking Disney or Apple - they're a lifestyle brand. There are some people who spend thousands of dollars annually on their products and might feel irrationally invested in the business. Others might have insecurities or extreme dysfunctions they perceive to be "solved" by the brand. People are deeply entrenched in the concept of these…

Are they gonna go against Dragon Quest VIII? After playing for a while you met a crazy guy that runs a ring of monsters and he then encumbers you with capturing monsters all around the world and put them to compete against each other on the arena. Are the gonna go against Hogwarts? They also have a mechanic of capturing monsters around the world. There's probably other examples out there but those are the ones I coul…

It's certainly terrible. But I don't think lawsuits like this threaten Nintendo at all. They own the Pokemon IP and want a court to rule whether or not their gameplay patent is violated. Worst case scenario is that they lose, and Nintendo could appeal the ruling or sue Palworld for something else like character likeness. Since Nintendo has prior art, their advantage in court is pretty sizable. Since they hire lawyers on retainer, they can effectively force the Palworld devs to settle out-of-court.

While I don't necessarily consider Palworld in the wrong, they clearly knew they were flying close to the sun. Nintendo is going to burn them for that, whether it's right or wrong or even legally correct. It's just what they do.

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#78

Post by cadamsdotcom »

TeaBrain wrote: post #24
LordKeren wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, not even close. Nintendo is not a VC funded startup fighting for their survival. The Nintendo switch 2 is right around the corner and looks like it is going to sell extremely well, after the massive success of the switch 1 Patents are not that expensive to file. They are not diverting any meaningful amount of cash flow to this. This is a side activity of a few employees

I highly doubt this was just filed as a side project of some developers. They probably have patent lawyers on staff or on retainer whom someone in the organization requested to file this. Especially since this seems related to the legal action they started against Palworld in 2024.

The sentence as written was “this is a side activity of a few employees”.

It appears to have been misread - and then interpreted as - “this is a side project of a few developers”.

The activity vs. project distinction is about whether it’s a companywide priority or just the job of a few folks.

And using the word employees instead of developers allows it to be an entirely independent activity from developers.

My read of what OP said is that this is the full time job of a very small number of people whose mandate was probably one utterance from the CEO. Executing on that is mostly common sense, thus requiring very little mindshare from anyone senior - thus, a side activity for the company as a whole.

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#79

Post by spondyl »

Zren wrote: post #38
MiddleEndian wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Looks like this patent is for capturing a virtual creature with a throwable item. Pokemon came out 29 years ago. Even if you recognize this patent it should be expired rather than slightly tweaked and then extended. Thanks for the reminder to buy Palworld, Nintendo!

The patent mentions the ability to aim the pokeball which wasn't in the first 3 Gameboy games. Does modern Pokémon start battles by throwing a pokeball to release a monster to begin fighting?

To answer your question, starting with Pokemon Legends Arceus[1], battles take place in the same overworld that you explore in.

You can see an example of this in action at 3:12 in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR7ZooH9Zos

[1]: This also carries over to Pokemon Scarlet/Violet, which is the latest mainline entry and will presumably remain the new standard going forward? Arceus was seen (and received) as more of a paid beta test for the system since the overworld was a bit empty at times

Re: Nintendo Obtains New Anti-Palworld Patent and Seeks Even More

#80

Post by archagon »

lelandfe wrote: post #33
gamedever wrote: post #17

Blame the government. You shouldn't be allowed to patent game mechanics IMO. Nitnendo has (had) a patent on ghost cars (showing a ghost of your former performance in Mario Kart) Sega has (had) a patent on zooming between camera positions from Virtua Racing 1 Wizards of the Coast has a patent on card games similar to Magic the Gathering. I don't know what their actual patent is but I do know lots of companies paid the…

The patented game mechanic I am most bummed won’t be appearing in other games is Death Stranding’s desire pathing. Having other players in an open word “wear” paths into the map was extremely cool.

Ugh, imagine if Renaissance painters took out patents on the color blue or perspective drawing. This is where we’re at with game design.
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