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.
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.
The request for an expedited review of patent number 7545191 also facilitated the approval of three other patents from Nintendo and The Pokemon Company (7528390, 7493117 and 7505854). Kurihara noted that amending an existing patent for specific litigation purposes is an established industry practice, and possibly what happened in this particular case.
This does not make sense to me.
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
I found this but found after reading it a bit I didn’t want to put in the effort to understand it lol
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
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)
My understanding of a patent (in the US) is that it’s only for new, novel concepts, often difficult to design or conceive.
Prior art, in this context, are just examples of this concept already in use or demonstrated. If there are already examples of the idea in use by others, then your idea isn’t new (and therefore not patentable).
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.
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.
