While I don’t know Japanese law, and folks are right in US law about prior art, I think everyone is missing the point.
Companies like Nintendo don’t have to actually win. They probably created this patent as a throw away to force Pocketpair to waste money fighting it. It costs tons of money to hire an attorney, work through the process, etc. It takes YEARS.
Nintendo probably wants to waste Pocketpair’s time and money OR they’re trying to get them to just settle and give Nintendo a cut of the profits.
That’s how big tech works with tons of patents and how patent trolls keep leeching off society. I have a patent for a button, you have a phone you’re making. I say give me 1% of your profit. What’s 1% to you? You agree, we don’t go to court and the next person that does it I do the same thing, but now I show them how many people agreed and that person is scared and think I have a legit case.
This shit is constantly happening in the background nonstop.
Patent law, copyright law, they are fundamentally broken. But they won’t get fixed until something BIG happens.
Nintendo is and always has been a bully. This is just another instance of it.
Just stop buying Nintendo. I sure did, last 2 things I bought was used 6ish mo ago, and now I’m out for good. Never looking back. Nintendo’s boat is sunk. It’s going to be monumentus when Nintendo is crushed. They earned what happens next.
Look, I hate the Nintendo tax and legal bullying too.
But having the second best selling system, up there with the PS2, I doubt they’re sunk anytime soon.
So first we can’t even get (unpaid) mods in other games that add/include Nintendo things in them, now Nintendo is just flexing their stupid balls at everything they can?
Fuck this goddamn world, dude. This timeline fucking sucks.
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.
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).
