An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
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Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#2Sounds like some folks at the USPTO are looking forward to well-paid jobs at Nintendo.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#3It’s strange that you can patent gameplay mechanics. After all, gameplay mechanics are what define a genre.
It’s like in literature if someone could patent the idea of a detective investigating a murder.
How could the "pokemon-like" genre even exist if you couldn’t create a game that uses “summoning and battling characters”?
Even worse, that description alone applies to multiple genres... JRPGs, or even fighting games with multiple characters (something like Marvel vs. Capcom) could fit that description.
I can understand intellectual property rights for very specific technical implementations (for example, the raycasting technique used in Wolfenstein 3D) but you shouldn’t be able to patent the concept of the first person shooter itself. That feels more like restricting freedom of expression.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#4There are a lot of people spreading FUD about these patents, but if you read the actual patent, it’s not like Nintendo now has a patent on all summoning of creatures in video games. The patent is for “you control a character, you throw Pokéball, Pokémon comes out and you control it, and if it comes near another Pokémon it starts a battle”. This is clearly aimed directly at Palworld.
Are most software patents stupid and overly broad? Yes. Should this one have been granted? No. Is this going to stifle the industry? Highly unlikely.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#5Sounds like some folks at the USPTO are looking forward to well-paid jobs at Nintendo.
It's the spirit of the times.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#6There are a lot of people spreading FUD about these patents, but if you read the actual patent, it’s not like Nintendo now has a patent on all summoning of creatures in video games. The patent is for “you control a character, you throw Pokéball, Pokémon comes out and you control it, and if it comes near another Pokémon it starts a battle”. This is clearly aimed directly at Palworld. Are most software patents stupid a…
I found the patent extremely difficult to read, but I didn't see anything that describes something so specific as throwing a Pokéball, and in fact, it seemed to me that the patent specifically covers cases where the Pokémon comes out and you don't control it.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#7I'm sorry but the default USPTO position should be to deny process/algorithm/software patents without true innovation. In this case, their own game/show was first released in 1996 in which the patent itself would be invalid from that position, even if they had completely invented the mechanics/idea with no other prior art, their own art is well longer than the term a Patent can/should protect.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#8There are a lot of people spreading FUD about these patents, but if you read the actual patent, it’s not like Nintendo now has a patent on all summoning of creatures in video games. The patent is for “you control a character, you throw Pokéball, Pokémon comes out and you control it, and if it comes near another Pokémon it starts a battle”. This is clearly aimed directly at Palworld. Are most software patents stupid a…
I found the patent extremely difficult to read, but I didn't see anything that describes something so specific as throwing a Pokéball, and in fact, it seemed to me that the patent specifically covers cases where the Pokémon comes out and you don't control it.
You're correct that the patent (in Claim 1) does not specifically refer to throwing a Pokeball (just to "causing the sub character to appear" based on an input), but it seems to me to still be directly linked to this dynamic.
The article itself is quite low-quality (as usual with articles where the title and subheadline are quotes) and I'd go as far as assume it's probably a PR piece placed by another player in the space.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#9I'm sorry but the default USPTO position should be to deny process/algorithm/software patents without true innovation. In this case, their own game/show was first released in 1996 in which the patent itself would be invalid from that position, even if they had completely invented the mechanics/idea with no other prior art, their own art is well longer than the term a Patent can/should protect.
It makes me wonder, what's stopping someone from flooding the patent office with thousands of AI generated process/algorithm/software patents, and declaring them free to use for anybody? That's one way I could think of to protect games from being stifled by future patents.
Re: An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
#10It’s strange that you can patent gameplay mechanics. After all, gameplay mechanics are what define a genre. It’s like in literature if someone could patent the idea of a detective investigating a murder. How could the "pokemon-like" genre even exist if you couldn’t create a game that uses “summoning and battling characters”? Even worse, that description alone applies to multiple genres... JRPGs, or even fighting game…
The actual patent goes into specifics about the covered mechanic they are patenting and it focuses much more on the pokeball/swapping mechanics.
That being said, if they ever tried to hit anyone with the entirety of that, other than in a case of 1:1 replication of Pokemon, it would be a spurious weapon at best. There's too much prior art + alternative implementations in existence to argue for a unique and inventive mechanic.