127
Game design patents are fucking stupid
this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2024
127 points (97.0% liked)
Games
32491 readers
1679 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Any technically not allowed. Not that that'll stop them.
Can you explain? I wish this was true but I don't believe it
What he might be referring to is that you can't patent code, at least in the US. But, the lawsuit is in Japan, so who tf knows.
But code subject to copyright (which I agree with the concept of but it needs a reform). While concepts and ideas in computer programs and games can be patented (which I think is tremendously stupid)
Did they file those patents after palworld came out?
Filed before, updated and approved after.
Yes they did. Blatant patent trolling
From the translation of the claims, they appear to describe Pokémon-style activities, with ‘191 focused on the act of throwing a ball at characters in a field, ‘117 tied to aiming, and ‘390 on riding characters.
If this is indeed the case, the lawsuit is clearly illegitimate (in the real sense, can't speak for legal nuances). Not surprising.
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.
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).
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.
Cheers!
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
I'm pretty sure there were flying mounts even before Skyrim. Hell, go all the way back to joust.
Didn’t you know gaming started with Skyrim. 🤦
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.
The patents were filed after Palworld was released
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?
Imagine if doom patented shooting a gun at an enemy
Seriously? Are they gonna go after TemTem. Coromon, Cassette Beasts, or any number of Pokémon clones for being too similar? The only thing i can see as a legitimate thing to sue on is if they find out palworld did use AI based off of Pokémon models to generate their models, but I think that was just a rumor anyway.
The difference between palworld on the ones you listed is Sony made a move to start a "Pokemon company"-like business with the Palworld devs (named Palworld Entertainment) and Nintendo feels threatened by the potential damages Palworld Entertainment would be able to cause being backed by Sony to the pokemon franchise. In-depth look on this theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8apzrwv75i0
5 mil yen is about $32k. In total they're suing for about $100k.
I would imagine the 3rd patent at the very least should be invalidated - riding characters in video games predates Pokemon (MegaMan riding Rush comes to mind, as well as World of Warcraft [although I don't know if the patent predates WOW mounts]). However the nature of patents is that once they're granted they are very difficult to dismiss.
The other two are more tricky. Throwing balls at something us a uniquely Pokémon idea, I think, and the aiming one would come down to the technicalities of the patent itself, which is all Japanese to me.
I'm pretty certain these patents are actually relatively new, keep that in mind too
Yeah the newer they are, the more frivolous they are - especially since you could argue the release of games using those patents amounts to public disclosure.
However, you're still left in the situation where an established patent is very solid and difficult to challenge, even when it should never have been granted in the first place.
Yeah the newer they are, the more frivolous they are
Filing for patent on a mechanic that's been in the public for 28 years already is disingenuous as fuck. Pokemon started in 1996. The throw a ball at it thing has been out there for nearly 30 years. If you have filed a patent for it in all that time... and just now choose to. That's just dumb. If they were to have applied for the patent the day that pokemon was thing in the USA... The patent would have expired 8 years ago. It's untenable to accept these patents from Nintendo.
They also filled these in Japanese court where Nintendos success affects their economy greatly
Remember how apple won every fucking lawsuit against Samsung back in the day because they filled them in California?
The court is going to be pressured by outside forces to rule in Nintendo's favor to avoid the stock market having issues there
Inb4 Palworld has Pal Polygon instead of Sphere