That's not exactly it. I read the description of '191 and it seems to be more like "throwing a ball to capture a character and place it in the player's possession or throwing it to release a captured character". You can see the patent drawings also depecting that, so it's basically a patent of the Pokeball.

Not a lawyer so I have no idea how it'll go in court but it does sound like Palworld infringes on this. It's kinda funny that they could've avoided this by being a bit more legally distinct, like how TemTem throws cards instead of balls.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 22 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Interesting. Yes, that is a bit more specific.

I personally do not support game design patents because that's not how gaming works (and people who file such game design patents know this).

What are the other two patents like if you don't mind me asking? Aiming in particular seems openly malicious (as do mounts to be honest).

[–] simple@lemm.ee 16 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The second one is an older application of the first patent (pokeball again). The third one is literally just being able to mount an object or creature with some caveats like a flying one having to come down and carry you up, that one is ridiculous and a lot of games do something similar all the time.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 5 points 4 days ago

Cheers!

[–] LordGimp@lemm.ee 0 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Skyrim did it first with dragons. Honestly I bought palworld specifically to spite shitendo and ended up pleasantly surprised by a very playable game. Shitendo is just mad that someone else did it better on a shoestring budget

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure there were flying mounts even before Skyrim. Hell, go all the way back to joust.

[–] Walican132@lemmy.today 2 points 4 days ago

Didn’t you know gaming started with Skyrim. 🤦

[–] BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 12 points 4 days ago

It would be funny if a legal defense would have been using an n-sided 3d polygon that definitely isn't a sphere. Is a tetrahedron legally distinct enough? How about a truncated isocohedron? Seems silly for the shape to matter.

[–] brlemworld@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago (2 children)

The patents were filed after Palworld was released

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 4 days ago

The one thing about patent law I know is that you can't patent something that already exists in the wild ("prior art"), so surely that can't be the case, and if it is then it's open-and-shut, right?