Patenting video game mechanics is like patenting movie tropes. Imagine if Disney was just like, "I have patented the love triangle. No one else can put a love triangle in their movies ever again. Also, we now own the exclusive rights to the hero-to-villain/villain-to-hero character arcs. Suck it, everyone else."
Honestly, I'd be all for that. not because I want Disney to own our world even more but more so that writers have to try harder and make better stories rather than sticking to the same 3 tropes
Patenting is known to be flawed. Let’s not forget the 2001 “circular transportation facilitation device”. Someone-just to show the flaws-decided to patent a wheel, while someone approved it :D
@@kaijuultimax9407Yes, "Patent Troll", someone who makes a shit ton of patents and does nothing with them just so nobody else can make similar things without paying out of the ass. Nintendo is well known to be a patent troll already, along side Microsoft and Sony - it's just, MS and Sony don't actually defend the game mechanic patents to such a degree. Because they understand its bad for the industry and creativity.
@@flabort its bad for their Reputation. It has absolutely nothing to do with q Quality of games. Especially the quality of their competitors' games. Why the heck would the company want others to succeed? Its not in it's interest.
When Id made their money and Doom was starting to get old, they released rhe source code so people could learn and get even more out of the game. Could you imagine a world where Nintendo is the kind of company that releases the source code of all their games when they where 10 years old? The games in that world are probably pretty great.
There is a ray of hope here, as a few Japanese law professionals are saying that many of Nintendo's patents may be narrowed or even revoked entirely because of this lawsuit.
That's only if Pocketpair fights for long enough. If Nintendo puts enough financial pressure on through these legal shenanigans they may settle out of court without anything about Nintendo's patents being changed. I'm not a laywer but since this case started up I have looked into Japanese patent law to see how similar it is to US patent law. Lack of novelty is still a reason for patents to be rejected and for each patent people have found that is relevant to Palworld there has been prior art that would invalidate the patent. Not a one of these patents should have been granted, but Nintendo is going to be trying to drain the coffers of Pocket Pair by stalling in the courts as long as possible to prevent it from getting to the point where these could be overturned.
@@Eric-yd9dm With enough negative press pointing at nintendo for this I could see sony going out of their way to use this to try and gain some goodwill and stick it to an aggressive market competitor. It really depends on how much value they put on stepping on nintendo's toes and if anyone in a boardroom thinks to try to use this for a pr win.
The only reason that it is accepted is that they are doing fun games. Their behaviour is utterly malicious and they are one of the worst anti consumer companies out there. They never release their games on other hardware than their own. They rarely discount their games They destroy their communities with lawsuits even if the community wants to just organize events Their hardware is barely enough to run their games and if you want to emulate it to actually have better performance the project will get a lawsuit - even if you need to buy the game to emulate it (the recent move against emulators is probably because they will release new console soon)
@@Ryanowning let's be real here. Large majority of the "nintendo buyers" buy their games / consoles cause they're fun and have absolutely 0 knowledge or care of what's going on with Palworld (or in general what Nintendo does in court). You think 5 angry people on reddit would cause any relevant monetary loss when Nintendo makes insane amounts of money off mainly kid products? Nah, and they know it. They know well enough that their bullying actions in court have no economic consequence.
If I remember correctly, another Japanese gaming company Bandai Namco had a patent on "auxiliary games" until 2015, basicly minigames, during loading screens. Think about it for decades while we gamed we could have been playing a mini game while waiting for our game to load, Instead of having to stare at our screens for what sometimes could be a long ass time. I don't like it when big corporations use scummy tactics to actively make everything shittier for their benefit. Japan's court system seems like it quite often favours large corporations and the state. The conviction rate in Japanese criminal justice system is over 99%. With numbers like that something doesn't feel right.
Or how about WB and the Nemesis system? That is what they used in shadow of mordor and its sequel on the orc to make them interact with the player. How many cool game ideas could have come from this that we wont see because of them patenting it
Fun Fact: There's a "scam" that involves falsely accusing a foreigner of a crime and only releasing them from jail once they pay a bribe to a government official. Also, it's a staple for police officers to force confessions out of people. Great country that does a lot of things right, but some of the bad parts of the American system are quite emphasized for a country that's otherwise so advanced.
The worst part of that patent that no one talks about is the very real chilling effect it had on game development. Because it's been almost a decade since the patent expired and yet Bamco is still the only company that does loading screen minigames. The only good news is that with the evolution of technology, loading screens won't be around much longer anyways.
i'm a brazilian law student, at first glance this is really dangerous not only because it opens a door for patents on simple game mechanics like a health bar, so all the games with health bar have to pay me fees, but the real danger lies in reactivity of the law suit, if there is a possibility for me to sue some one based only on a patent, like based only on a peace of paper with a date in it, ignoring the material reality allows other crazy things to happen, depending on the laws of the country it can be scratched for other stuff, like sports, i file a patent on some sport and a can sue every one who involved in that sport
"reactivity of the law suit" Exactly. If this precedent is set then anyone with a patent can use the derivative patent system to patent troll any other corporation within Japan. It would be complete chaos.
This is EXACTLY why all the game studios and devs in the 1980s agreed (in an agreement upheld to this day) that they would patent every unique mechanic in their games and then NEVER enforce them, so that no third party could come in an extort the games industry with hostile patents.
As they say: "Nine-year-old Paco Gutierrez always wanted a Nintendo console, but as a poor resident of Venezuela, he could only dream of one. Thanks to his ingenuity and the help of his uncle, he was able to build a Mario game out of cardboard, as well as upload a video about it to RUclips and become famous. After noticing the video, one of the Nintendo executives personally flew to Venezuela to serve him with a lawsuit and sue their family for 200 million."
Let's not forget that "Throw an object at a monster to capture it" is literally not even Game Freak's creation. They got it from Ultraseven in the 80's, and almost got sued for it and had to change the name of their game from "Capumon" to "Pokemon" in order to stop themselves from getting destroyed by a massive company.
Just reinforces the many phrases alluding to this kind of behavior... "Hurt people hurt people." "You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain." "The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors." So often, it seems, the levels to which people will attempt to mistreat others is directly proportional to the amount of power they have over others rather than any sense of morality or lived experiences. As much as people love an underdog, they seem to more firmly believe that "might makes right" when they are the mighty...
"There's no benefit to games, for doing this." It all really did just scream almost as a spiteful getback at Pocketpair for challenging and succeeding at a game that was just made out of passion and devs that wanted to make a fun game similar to Pokemon. Patenting mechanics is just greed and another card for companies to stay on top, it stifles creativity and is a horrible direction for games.
@@michaelstaggmick so you like monopolies? You like basically only one player dominating the market and in the process enshitifying the product in order to extract as much money as possible while delivering bellow the bare minimum they can get away with? Case release after release nintendo has with pokemon doing "it's ok cause it's pokemon, they will buy regardless", "oh the game runs like shit and has glitches that even indie studios manage to fix before launch? No biggie it's pokemon"
Reminds me of the Worlds 3d developer who owns the patent for "players interacting in an online 3d environment" or something else like that, something so vague it applies to literally every 3d multiplayer game in existence
You can invalidate a patent in court if you manage to prove it's too vague and wide-reaching, but it still costs money and time. Similarly, you can invalidate a patent if you can prove the patent's mechanic was not actually invented by the patent holder, i.e. was used in other products prior to theirs.
If the Pokemon vs Palworld lawsuit is about the method of capture, there is a problem. There are a TON of other games that use this method. Ark Survival Evolved uses Cryopods TemTem uses TemCards Coromon uses Scanners Nexomon uses Nexotraps And many, many more.
They are also small in terms of funding. Palworld got big and did so very fast. Nintendo doesn't want competition like this, so they're doing what they can to stop it. @@Chestyfriend
I don't know about Ark, but the other ones don't do it in realtime in a 3D environment. Those are turn based and works like the "old" pokemon games, not Legends Arceus.
@@fiskern2241 ark is a 3D environment. As for the other games, it actually doesn't matter. From what I have gathered about game freak and Nintendo. They will go after games of similar nature if they pose a threat in one of the following ways. 1. It's too close to a release of a pokemon game 2. It makes way too much money and pulls the player base away 3. Rare occasion, the name is in use 4. The characters/monsters are not as they would like it. 3 and 4 are more for fan games really, but the point still stands
Okay, real questions. What the hell do we do as international consumers to make charge in an international industry? What do we do to stop game mechanic patenting? It is destructive, it actively hurts the industry, so how do we make a difference?
@@xomvoid_akaluchiru_987 Simple, don't purchase from the offending party. If this is an egregious enough problem, move on, find other games to play. Yes, it would suck to give up Pokemon/Mario/any Nintendo IP but realistically, that's the only move average joes have against big companies: hit them in their wallets.
@@blackphoenixxiii9144 Adding more regarding what the average joe can do : Not buying is the best, but buying less is still better than buying a ton. So it is still better to buy only one of their games times to times than all of them. Be voiceful. For example tweet about your decision : "Not buying [company]'s game anymore since they did [bad stuff]". This can inspire some other people, and helps the company know why their sales are dropping, and eventually react at some point. A french rapper said in one song "One does not destroys the system by trying to destroying it, one destroys the system by building without it.". I think this is a good thing. Give your money and time to companies/authors etc that are fair, for example by buying their games.
@@blackphoenixxiii9144 "vote with your wallets" just isn't working, we still have season passes, loot boxes, in game perchases, streak rewards, ect. Honestly, after sleeping on it, I think we should organize and form a group, have a website listening offenders, and get content creators to support the movement as spokespersons. If we want to change international law, we have to change it one nation at a time. At least in the US I can actively try pushing a bill through congress, or maybe we try a civil suit? Honestly I think a civil suit would work well if we get a bunch of figures in the industry to submit supporting amicus curiea briefs.
I think a good way of getting the point across for "Should not be able to patent game mecchanics"... Is to compare it, simply, to other artforms. Imagine how many painters there would be if Picasso patented... The concept of a paintbrush. If Da Vinci patended oil based paints. If Rembrandt patented shapes on a canvas. If van gogh patented cloth canvases. That is what patenting a game mechanic is in gaming. It's patenting the very means of creating art. It's saying "No, you can't paint with a paint brush, I patented the paintbrush." And it's absolutely unacceptable.
Bad comparison because almost everyone knows about Anish Kapoor and his patented Vanta Black, a black so dark and so toxic that it looks like a void. Artists were furious that they would never get to own or use the material as Kapoor owns it for his own use only, forbidding anyone else from legally touching it. But then, Stuart Semple created Pinkest Pink and legally forbade Kapoor from purchasing or owning it, as well as anyone else from purchasing or owning it on his behalf. When Kapoor got his hands on Pinkest Pink and stuck his middle finger in it and posted the photo online. Unfortunately, Semple didn't sue because he's pretty poor compared to Kapoor. He did, however, make Black 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Diamond Dust (a paint filled with glass, so don't stick your finger in it!) and none are available to Kapoor for purchase, only literally everyone else. So, the lesson here is spite, I think. If someone rich stops you from doing something, smash your way around them and make them feel stupid and ashamed, then hit them back by disallowing them specifically from using your products. Reject patent; become Semple.
@@conspiracypanda1200 the problem with that is that the colors are a product not a mechanics within, the comparison to our scenario with palworld would be if any of the steps made to created the void black was patented thus no one could even use it again to create their own stuff
Possibly a better analogy than art would be medicine... as we can clearly see the difference in how non-patented medicine has helped the world compared to patented ones. For example, compare the polio vaccine to the smallpox vaccine. The polio vaccine was not patented, was invented in the 1950's, and rendered the disease nearly extinct within 30 years. The smallpox vaccine WAS patented, was invented in 1796, and the disease wasn't exterminated until 1980... nearly TWO HUNDRED years later. Coincidence? Another example is tuberculosis. There are both vaccines and cures for tuberculosis, all of which are patented. More people die from untreated tuberculosis than any other infectious disease. Those deaths are completely unnecessary... except that allowing 1.5 million unnecessary deaths each year protects the bottom line of several companies. I get that the world is filled with liars and cheats. I get that some people will steal just about anything for personal gain at the expense of the original creator. But patenting something in such a way that even the methods you used for its creation are legally barred from everybody is like killing your own cattle to prevent their theft. It is sad when it comes to art, it is stifling when it comes to games, it is immoral when it comes to medicine.
@@conspiracypanda1200 Patents also typically have an expiratiion - I think it's about 20 years? It's not to stop competition completely, it's to delay them. Thanks to this, you can now freely implement "ghost racer" or "mini game while waiting for load" mechanics into your game and not pay anyone anything. Licenses are a different beast - they don't expire, and are typically bought by business people, when companies approach their bancrupty, to ask people to pay up, should they infringe on them. Example would be take downs of anything that's straight up copy of a tetris.
@@conspiracypanda1200 That's a very different issue, Vantablack is a very specific material with a complex manufacturing process, that is what is patented, and it's very common. None of the outcry is about Surrey patenting their creation. The outcry is that Kapoor got an *exclusive license* in the field of arts, so no other artist can license VB for their own pieces.
@@NanakiPL HA! You activated my trap card! I use hand movement for no monetary gain and for informational purposes! I’ll sue you… to donate to charity!
I remember as a kid, I played those DBZ Budokai games that would have a lil button mash mini game during the loading screens. Vegeta does push-ups, Goku eats food, etc. I always wondered why other games didn't have stuff like that during loading screens. I figured it was because they just didn't want to or didn't think of it. Turns out, Bandai patented the mechanic so that only their games could have stuff like that.
I say this as a Nintendo fan; God I hope this goes as south as PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE. I along with the rest of the industry NEEDS patenting gameplay mechanics to be made not legal.
@@Ryanowning It's been over a year for me. Between everything they've done to ruin the industry, and everything they'd done to destroy their fans... I can't justify giving them my money anymore, and that's not counting the absolute dogwater that is their console and games lately.
@@Zyartidk the recent games and switch weren’t bad. Botw and totk are both highly acclaimed, I wouldn’t say a switch is for everyone but it fits its place well enough
You can really see the duality of a company here, and what it's truly like. On one side, Nintendo has genius developers who have been producing, technically and in terms of polish, the best games on the market since the '80s, with only a few falling slightly below this incredibly high standard. On the other side, it's a greedy, outdated company that sues everyone, especially modders and programmers behind amazing fan projects, relentlessly targets emulation sites, and uses some of the worst technology for its online services. That's why I've learned never to idolize a company like a fanboy, whether it's Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or any other, big or small.
The Nemesis System in the Shadow of Mordor/War games. Patented & then never utilized by WB or any other game studios. The closest thing we got was the Hunt system in the later RPG Assassin's Creed which was half baked to avoid lawsuit & Watch_Dogs: Legion which admittedly does something interesting with the nemesis system by having it that you recruit the characters rather than fight them, However it's a Ubisoft game so the overall quality was pretty blurry.
That one specifically infuriates me because it could have been *revolutionary* if people were actually allowed to use and refine it into a standard feature.
The Nemesis system always comes up in this context and for good reason. That's something that could be used to make sooo many cool and interesting games, but only one publisher can do it now. Imagine the cool stuff that the indie or AA community could have done with that concept that we will never get to experience now
You can build a similar system if you work around the wording. Note the patent explicitly says enemies and nemisis system. Okay well I have the rememberance ai system and it randomly generates every object in the game. The files of the game store encounters with other objects and objects related to these encounters can access this file to iterate on previous encounters. It's all in wording.
I know the part at the end about them going after blizzard was kind of a joke, but I feel like that should be a valid option. If the developers of palworld were to contact developers of other games with the same/similar mechanics that Nintendo is attempting to patent they may be able to bring some back up to this fight. Basically, since Nintendo is being greedy and predatory send somebody even greedier and more predatory after them.
Kinda hard to imagine Nintendo going after Blizzard over that. Sounds like it would cost too much to win too little. So I gotta ask, why would Blizzard bother helping?
@@hugofontes5708 exactly because it would cost too much and win too little. I’m not saying it has to be blizzard, but the principal is still the same. You have one company effectively trying to take a mechanic that many others have used. And they will likely want to keep using it. Especially if they can profit from it, and considering multiple have already made profit from games with similar mechanics, they’re likely not happy to give up those profits. Simply having them come to the table would probably be enough to have Nintendo drop the whole thing. It would basically be showing Nintendo that it would be more risk than it’s worth.
@@vex9895 right, but doesn't Nintendo have to go sue them one by one? Why would any of them bother right now? They are big enough to discourage a bully attrition lawsuit now as much as later, the only ones I could see banding are either already involved or much smaller than Nintendo and need help too
@@hugofontes5708 the thing is if they win this case that just gives them more power to win other cases. Because that would set a legal precedent. Basically the more they win now the more they are going to win later. So it might be in those other companies best interest to stop it now.
Out of all the consoles the only one I was ever considering was the Switch. Since I heard a potential successor was coming out, I was planning on getting it. Though, not anymore. If a company wants to patent a broad mechanic, I refuse to give them even a bit of my support.
I think there is a component of capturing said monster, as well as a component of uncertainty in the capture (i.e. every throw doesn't result in capture)... so i don't think grenades count.
@@Raviispretty sure it is the broad aiming mechanism and isn’t specifically about catching anything. It’s been awhile since I read them, but they own a lot of bogus patents like the better balls being represented by colors (as if mobile game rarity isn’t a thing), the bonus from back hits, increased % based on HP and status effects. Things that RPGs have done all the time.
It’s not about winning in court. It’s about bleeding the competition dry and forcing a settlement that will neuter Pocket Pair. This is what is meant by they never lose. They don’t always win in judgement but they’re better than everyone else at manipulating the system to litigate their opponent to death. They’ve done this before to other devs and companies.
Warner Bros with their Nemesis system. One of the best features of any game I've played, and now it's locked away, likely to never be used again and we all miss out.
That expires August 11, 2036. 11 years, 9 months and 25 days from today. Also people seem to be interpreting that patent way too broadly. For example, the patent specifies that the non-player is part of a faction with an ranked hierarchy.
If you read the patent for the nemesis system is really, really specific and other more modern games have done similar things. You basically need enemies to remember you after you die and gain status based on those interactions, including developing a personality. You need a game where you have an excuse to not permanently die for that kind of system to work and Legacy of Kain is probably the only series I can think of where it would work well. AC Odessey had a similar thing with their bounty hunters but since you never came back from death and they never developed a personality the patent didn't apply to them.
@@ericm5315 that's literally the point of ppl being sad this is pattented. "You basically need enemies to remember you after you die and gain status based on those interactions, including developing a personality." That's the whole thing. a LOT of games would have been awesome with that mechanic. "You need a game where you have an excuse to not permanently die for that kind of system to work and Legacy of Kain is probably the only series I can think of where it would work well." There are a lot of solution to this. A allied npc save you last minute, you teleport away, wathever works.
@@ericm5315 I don't know which rock you live under, but Hades is a thing now. Dead Cells before that. In fact, this mechanic would have been awesome in so many roguelikes/roguelites/roguewhatevers. Several entries in Prince of Persia have you never die.
Golden 😂 But seriously, it sucks because there's literally nothing people can do about this bs. Nintendo is just too powerful to stop at this point, and all we can do is attempt to make people stop buying from nintendo (which is impossible) or pray that the judge in this case sides with the smaller company, which is unlikely because nintendo has unlimited money and scummy tactics to keep the lawsuit going until either palworld loses, or goes bankrupt from legal fees.
I feel like the real power move here would be for the Palworld devs to pay their animators to redesign the capture devices as cubes, and have them be projected at targets via various golf clubs or croquet mallets instead. Now we're no longer violating the patent.
@@NicromeShooter They're probably not going to win purely because Nintendo can keep throwing money at the suit until Palworld loses by no longer being able to continue. But a solution like this would mean circumventing the terms of the patent and spitting in Nintendo's eye because they don't want to protect their patent, they want to shut down the competition.
This isn’t the only patent btw, we don’t know the specific patents sued on yet but it’s theorized about this among others like the mounting of animals and being able to land and dismount. Nintendo also owns seeing a silhouette of your PC when obscured from vision btw. Palworld Entertainment or whatever might be helpful in this lawsuit. Sony Music and Aniplex (both Sony) may ensure it doesn’t come to a “running out of money” situation. But yea this is terrible for all. And even if it’s Japanese court, it will still deter small devs from risking trying mechanics like this worldwide because they’ll be afraid to get sued. Small studios can’t pay a patent attorney to shift through thousands if not hundreds of thousands of patents before doing anything. TPC/Nintendo are patent trolls and gross.
If Nintendo wins it means that anyone can use derivative patents to backdate enforceable dates. Do you have any idea the level of chaos that would cause? Anybody with any patent and holdings in Japan could just change their previous patents to whatever they like and sue others over patent infringement. The Japanese economy would collapse because all business would be a massive legal risk. Nintendo is screwed here.
In 1994, Namco made Ridge Racer for the PS1. The devs were worried about the load times, and so added the game Galaxian that people could play during loading screens. Namco (and then Bandai-Namco, when they merged) patented this mechanic. They never used it again. The patent expired in 2015, too bad the industry totally forgot this idea ever existed. Patenting Game Mechanics never is good for anything other then the Corporation that does it. Like WB patenting the Nemesis system, though it is supposed to be used in the Wonder Woman Game Monolith is making, assuming WB doesn't shut it down for a Tax Write Off, of course.
Namco did use the mechanic at least once after Ridge Racer. Tekken 5 allowed you to play Starblade during the initial load screen. It still shouldn't have been patented as there were other mini-games used in load screens before their patent in 1995.
Thanks that's the patent I was trying to remember. For decades I have wanted an RPG that lets me mess with inventory while it loads, and this is why we never got one.
I wanted to point this example out for people since it's a really good example of a patent killing a mechanic from flourishing in the games industry, props to you for doing it for me and better than I could've lol.
I don't think Nintendo has any legs on this realistically, I just think it's a war of attrition. That being said, this is Japan and their patent laws are probably very different from what we might be used to. Nintendo is also old and established, which is the one thing that's gold above money in Japan.
agreed. This i think is why nintendo was able to push the sub-patents through so fast(the patent filing even states it was fast-tracked). Nintendo is a big and old name, and that kind of thing has weight in Japan
They don't have any right morally to that and in countries like USA they would lose, but it's Japan. Japan is weird. For example in Japan if you say something bad about a company it's defamation, even if what you said is truthful and not even exaggerated nor malicious. If it did damage to the company you lose. Funny country
The problem is that Japan has an even worse problem of mega corporations controlling their government than even America does. The answer to me would be that Palworld moves its hq to USA or something
the only actual reason they have any power in this is because they're both japanese companies and so they can use japanese law to their advantage. Nintendo is bullying them out with local laws.
These are actually valid patents in Japan. According to their patent law you can subdivide an existing, broader patent into smaller, more specific patents, and their effective date is retroactive to the original parent latent. It doesn’t matter if these new patents came out after palworld, the original parent patent was before palworld and that’s all that matters. The Japanese courts will agree, this isn’t the first time it’s happened. The really bad part is that due to international treaties these new patents are enforceable in America as well as the vast majority of the world.
From what I’ve heard (from not lawyers) is that they had the patent a very long time ago. iirc, it was in the 90’s. They filed a different kind of lawsuit after palword’s release. This kind of patent is to “clarify” the language of the old patent or to separate multiple concepts that the first patent covered. The kicker about this type of patent is that (per the written law) this new/revised patent takes effect from the date of the original patent. This is because its purpose is to “clarify” language of the old patent. They used this new patent to write specific language that describes palword to a tee. They 100% did this to “get back” at pocket pair but they actually (allegedly) followed the law in doing so. They now have a brand new patent that can be enforced as far back as the 90’s… truely aweful
And this is why Nintendo will fail, because if this is allowed then anybody with any patent can use derivative patents to backdate the enforceable date of the changes. It will be pure chaos, every single business in Japan will have massive legal liability. And Christ...think of the angry nerds of means who are gonna abuse this to high hell and back to make Nintendo pay big time. Because they will. This is Pandora's box for Japan and Nintendo is trying to force that thing open.
a big reason why game companies patent random things like this is because back in the arcade days small companies would patent things that they saw in other games and then sue the company (pretty much what nintendo is doing now) so the company would patent every little feature in the game just to avoid being sued by someone else in the future. they can (and have) been used maliciously but theres an honour code which companies dont break. funny enough this same thing happened to nintendo themselves before so now we get to see the tables turn.
My example for this is, I think that more games could benefit from the mechanic in Middle Earth: Shadow of war nemesis system. We could have had some really cool games with that mechanic in it but WB locked that down. Now while I like Shadow of War I played it now I am done, I haven't seen that in any other games (please let me know if there are other games). A very interesting game choice locked to 1 game and at the time of me posting this it has 4 viewers on twitch what a complete waste of everything that went into designing this just so you can be the only owner of that. 1000% not a great move for the gaming industry. EDIT: Watching the video I see all the comments in the chat for this as well
Not a patent lawyer, but have researched the subject due to the situation. From what I've seen, this isn't as much a slam dunk as Nintendo's record might indicate. The patent can be challenged, and one of the grounds is Prior art. You have to read the claims of the Patent, as that's what's protected. However, if you can show that each of the claims is not new, then it can invalidate the Patent. Furthermore, Pocket Pair doesn't need an example that checks off every single claim, but just needs to show that each claim has been done before in the gaming industry.
Considering the fact that the pokeball concept has been used since the 90s, the patent shouldn't hold up. Not even the use in 3d would either due to prior games released on the n64/gamecube. This is more of a case involving technology anyway, so the software is the only thing that can be patented. The pokemon brand falls under trademark and copyright law, not patent law.
Exactly, the "first to patent" talking point doesn't make sense to me because the thing in question has to be a novelty which Nintendo does not have. The Palworld trailers themselves could invalidate the patents since they would be considered documenting that idea, not to mention the many examples of games that use those idea beforehand too.
@@billyparker5974 It's not the pokeball concept, it's the explicit method of throwing a pokeball as you'd see in Legends Arceus that are the patent claims.
@@sirmcpablo7349 What you'd assume Novelty to mean, and what the Legal standard of Novelty means are two different things. From my understanding, the legal standard of Novelty is met, simply because it's a new direction for the Pokemon Franchise. I don't agree with it, but that's the standards we're working with. First to Patent doesn't matter, because most of the claims can be pieced out and fit generic mechanics applied in most video games.
@tylerbarse2866 Throwing a capturing device at a creature is not a novelty and has been done numerous times in video games in the public space. There's no assumptions about it.
It feels like Nintendo just cracked open Pandora's box. Now imagine other companies looking at this and thinking, "Wait, you can do that?" and suddenly everyone's patenting the most random stuff. It could honestly be the beginning of the end for gaming as we know it. But if things ever got that bad, I bet we'd see the first global gamer protest, with developers and maybe even some companies joining in. Hopefully, it would lead to the complete elimination of the ability to patent game mechanics altogether. It would definitely turn into something huge.
This is no big news, from what I understand a lot of companies simply don't do this though, because the big ones know this can be exploited, and thus have taken their own measures to prevent this from happening. I recommend you search information about the case with Nintendo vs Colopl to see how this usually works.
You absolutely nailed it. They are out for $$$ and it's sickening. It should be illegal to patent Game mechanics, no different than patenting music instruments to make music. If someone can use great and interesting game mechanics BETTER and make a better game, then it is absolutely in the interest of the consumer. These companies don't make a dime without the gamers and if they make crap, we don't buy. Why would they feel motivated to make good stuff, if all they do is block other devs from using great mechanics in more artistic, meaningful or captivating ways.
Imagine patenting chord progressions in music, slow motion action scenes in movies, rhetorical devices in literature, cooking techniques for cooking... so dumb. The reason we have amazing, endless creations in everything is because we can use known/same/similar concepts in new ways and combinations.
Unfortunately chord progressions don't need to be patented because the copyright system and its overreach have already made it so you can't use "too similar" of a progression.
Just imagine the discourage for new developers wanting to make new games, and now they have to worry about not copying mechanics in order to not be sued by Nintendo and ruin their lives, just imagine Nintendo patented Super Metroid mechanics 30 years ago and the amount of great games that could not exist today. What we may be witnessing here is the end of videogames as we know it folks, and the greatest irony with this is that Nintendo saved the videogame industry back in the 80s, and Nintendo could easily destroy that same industry with this behavior.
@@soirema in the US, yeah. In Japan, things are a lot more blurry. Essentially the japanese game industry has enough patents from the years to bury eachother in litigation for infringement IF THEY WANTED TO. They don't. They basically have a public code of honor where they're allowed to use eachothers stuff, so long as its not explicit. Examples include Dragon Quest, Pokemon, etc. There was previously a case where Nintendo sued the company Colopl for attempting to bully smaller devs into paying to use their "Punycon" control scheme. It wasn't heavily covered in the West. Go look up the details.
Almost right BUT not quite. Since Nintendo filed the patent request AFTER the fact it would be more like if Nintendo patented the Metroid mechanic NOW and sued every game company that every used it (In the last 30 years) into bankruptcy. Let that sink in...
I havent seen anyone bring this up but "Lost Kingdoms II" was a game in 2003 that has an item called the Capture Card. You throw it at a monster in 3d space, and that monster gets turned into a card you can then send out to use/summon the monster. if thats the patent theyre going after, theyre kinda 21 years too late.
I mess around with third party d&d creation. It was my understanding you can't patent individual board game mechanics you can't patent what dice are being used you can't say that that using 4D6 or a d20 is specifically your games mechanic. Kind of weird that this is going to be allowed in a more complex medium. I don't know the case where this was decided obviously but pretty sure there's been precedent to protect other board game companies against this sort of lawsuit.
That is the only way AAA games and companies can fight indie space/smaller studios. They can't make better games so they sue them. That will make the world better for sure
To your final remark: Thing is, this is Japanese law. PocketPair and Nintendo are Japanese companies, doing business out of Japan. Blizzard isn't. Suing PocketPair is a local lawsuit, suing Blizzard would be an international lawsuit which is way different. Think of it: How many truly international lawsuits do we see each month? or rather, year? As soon as multiple different systems of law get involved, things get complicated and at least some politics bleeds in. Nintendo knows that, and as long as we internationally don't violate Nintendo's copyrights (the laws of which are internationally very similar) they pretty much can't touch us. We can't sell in Japan, for sure, but everywhere else we can. So what's happening here in reality is that Japan is beginning to run the risk of being isolated from the international markets.
As a Melee player, Nintendo is an absolute monster even when there isn't money involved. I've never seen such jealous behavior from such a high standing organization, it's unreal how it feels like petty high school drama sometimes.
It should be noted that Nintendo just opened a new position for IP lawyer earlier this week. This will continue beyond Palworld and I hope Palworld wins so that it can potentially quell Nintendo's legal bloodlust
And now for my latest patent on the color blue. If you use the color blue, or any color derived from blue, you are now infringing on my patent and I get to waste the court's time over it.
If I was Palworld I would patent some odd mechanic of theirs and counter sue in japans courts, but to fund it I would do crowd sourcing, like "help us sue nintendo" edition dlc I would also verbatim their arugements in the opposing court, under the same judge if possible
the problem is that given the original patent for Arceus dates back to 2021, Japanese patent law is on the side of Nintendo. In a court of law, that's what matters. Now if you filed a new patent and then tried to sue nintendo, you'd be laughed out of court because a patent filed in 2024 or later, will have no enforceable means on prior Nintendo titles. Additionally gaming devs in Japan are in the habit of patenting everything in case someone tries to use the patents against them; its been a thing since the 80s.
@@GokuSS400 But as Thor stated Palworld existed before the patent itself. That suit falls flat if the catching mechanic already existed in the product before the patent itself.
there is a tactic with patents where you let the opposition spend money and then let them run into the knife later. you can keep a patent secret and dont have to show the patent right away when you see someone else come up with the same idea. something like this happens in engeneering for medical equipment more often than you would think. then again. my mind is with two teams comming up with the same idea independently, one team being faster filing a patent and the other team gets told some months into trying to get the same patent
There are a few companies that have patented mechanics already, one of the most infamous ones being Namco establishing itself as the only company that was allowed to put minigames in loading screens between 1995 and 2015. Another patent that is still in effect is on WB Games' Nemesis system in the Lord of the Rings Shadow of ____ Games, which doesn't expire until 2035. WB Games themselves haven't used this mechanic in a game in 8 years. The weirdest part of the whole thing is that you can't do this in the board game space as there are clauses against trying to claim ownership of mechanics or rules without tangibility, so that kind of thing doesn't happen. Games Workshop works around this by presenting their Warhammer army rulebooks with the Art and lore of the faction first, thus providing the tangibility to charge $50 to access an army's mechanics. But that is the case of a company exploiting a loophole and not the norm for the industry.
What's frustrating is that Nintendo could've made a better Palworld on their own, but would never have bothered until Palworld proved it's success. Now they'd be better off just buying the company outright instead of burying them with a lawsuit.
lawsuits like these are troubling because they set precedents. Future lawsuits by bad actors will reference this lawsuit to make their case in court. Yes you can patent game mechanics and yes it's very damaging to the industry because a game can pioneer a novel mechanic and instead of it spawning an entire genre (which is one of the main things driving growth, studios, jobs, and diversity in games) it will instead lock it down to a specific developer or publisher and they can just sit on it or the mechanic will never come to market if a certain project goes south. Notable examples of game mechanics that have been patented: The nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor. Many games have attempted to implement this system (it's really cool) only to be shut down because the patent rights belong to the publisher of SOM. Apparently the parkour system in Assassins Creed iirc. Supposedly when the gameplay trailer for Shadow of Mordor came out they themselves got called out by Ubisoft over their climbing/traversal system which took very obvious inspiration from AC. I don't remember if any actual litigation came from it, but it was certainly close and I think since then Ubisoft has attempted to patent their parkour mechanic.
Ubisoft doesn't seem to have any patent related to parkour but they have a bunch of patents on controllers/using instruments as controllers. They apparently have a patent on sending a invite to a friend to play a multiplayer game ...
I think the "that they initiated" is important here. If companies sue Nintendo before Nintendo has a chance to sue them first they have a much higher chance of success, see Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc. Im glad this is happening in Japanese court at least because this becoming legal prescedent in the United States or EU would be scary
There are international treaties and other agreements that could possibly allow this Japanese ruling to be upheld against other companies overseas. You notice how every website now nags you about cookies despite you not being in the EU? Just because you are not in their legal jurisdiction does not mean you will not be affected.
1:59 That's false actually, they lost a lawsuit in 2019 against company "ALLONE", a switch cover manufacturer which was accused of using too many elements from the console in their marketing. The whole "they patented capturing creatures" is also very exaggerated, if you read the actual patent you will see that it is much more specific to the way you capture pokemon in Legends Arceus, to the degree that in order to violate the patent you would need: the same aiming system, the same camera system, the same interactions between 2 creatures, the same interaction between creatures and the environment in regards to resource gathering, the same turn based combat system initiated by said interaction system. It becomes clear that they didn't patent "the monster collector genre", but Pokemon Legends Arceus, i agree that you shouldn't be able to patent game mechanics and i would argue that palworld doesn't violate the patent in question. I still feel that this video was partially biased or not based on a thorough research.
To the point of this lawsuit should be illegal. This is the concept of a SLAPP suit and is illegal with even Anti-slapp laws in some states in the US. Not sure about Japan.
I just popped in to say that that opening thumbnail graphic is completely unfactual Nintendo currently has a dude who can only eat and live off of charity because any penny he earns goes to them.
I really hope the attention this is getting can hopefully get a bunch of people to rise up and get change to the patenting of mechanics. These companies are powerful but surely with enough people under a common goal change can happen.
I'll do you one better, Red Dead Redemption was revealed in 2009 and has a horse taming mechanic that fits into Nintendo's patent. On top of that Sony is Pocket Pair's sugar daddy and Sony has an agenda against Nintendo.
It seems clear to me that the individuals who approve the patents have absolutely no knowledge of the topic on hand. Patents in general are a very flawed concept and having them be inappropriately administered makes the problem even worse.
Patent mechanics is absurd. This means I can patent how moving the character works, and therefore, any game with movable characters will have to pay me royalties, or else you'll have to code another way to move your characters, basically I'm taking control over how to vector the directional of your character in a general velocity from point A to point B, this means we can't have no more games with movable characters, that's stupid.
Patents in software are stupid in general, like how many years ago literary putting multiple program windows on top of each other was a lawsuit (I'm pretty sure)
I see what your saying, but the patent mechanic has to have novelty for it to go through, as in its 'unique', no other games or whatever have/is using that mechanic. So we are safe on that front.
@@TwoWayOrbitalStation If you read Nintendo's patent it basically describes how to throw a projectile in a 3D space. If you shoot an arrow with a bow you are doing the same. This is NOT "unique" it's literally how you throw projectiles in a 3D environment, the only difference is the "capture" thing, but the "capture" thing isn't from Pokemon, there are multiple games predeceasing the capture mechanic.
Legal Mindset has a good video explaining exactly how Nintendo is pulling this off, and why they will likely win. To terribly summarize, they had a broad patent before that somewhat slightly covered this, but after palworld got popular, they split that patent into child patents which lets you specify further what each feature means, however, it will still be effective back when the parent patent was effective. he describes it as a malicious move that is purposefully gaming the system. In recent years I have been becoming more and more dissatisfied with Nintendo as a whole and this doesn't help. Regardless of if you like palworld or not, Nintendo in Japan is overly protecting their IP. The way they think is very different than how others overseas might think. So to them, they are not doing anything malicious, all they are doing is protecting their IP in any way possible, which is potentially killing any sort of new innovation. something that came from DragonQuest before them.
Surely their patents have expired by now? Original pokemon came out in 1996, the patents associated with it should be almost a decade expired; this is true of any patents filing between 1996 and 2004 by the way, so any of their patents from then should be expired based off standard length of term of patents.
If they win then anybody with a patent can just use derivative patents to patent troll within Japan. It'll be total chaos, all business will essentially be held hostage. If Nintendo wins Japan loses and Japan will possibly get excluded from the international patent alliance or whatever the hell they officially call it as they just enabled massive fraudulent patent filings.
It's really funny then that they got their start in video games winning a lawsuit from universal because according to universal Donkey Kong was too similar to King Kong.
One of my favorite examples of this is that loading screens used to have a game or some fidget function, until one company patented that and then years after there isn't anything on loading screens.
@@SuperSmashDolls Their patent says nothing about a ball, it simply a capture mechanic requiring an item. There are 31+ claims for the patent, when I was going over it the first 19 could be summed up as common game mechanics. FF7 would defeat most of them, the legend of Zelda games from the 80s and 90s could defeat most of them.
I hate Nintendo so much. Spiteful, childish compony stuck in the past, hates anything that’s not theirs. They’d sue a child for having a Mario themed birthday party
They take pride in their integrity, and how they've stood firm against an increasingly anti-customer industry. But now they've gone too far, and that image is starting to slip enough for the public to see who they really are.
@@wontonschannel Someone needs to make a fanfiction of corporations as humans, that would be a horrifyingly hilarious spectacle. Everyone gets to be a rich narcissistic sociopath competing for popularity in their own ways.
I boycotted blizz for like 6 years and even today I still won't give them my money. If Nintendo thinks i'll let this shit slide they're about to be very wrong 😡
Nintentdo: "oh no theyre usin pokeballs in Palworlds" >other exec: "isnt that ours?" >> exec b: "It has to be we trademarked and copyrighted everyting to do with pokemon" >>>junior exec: "oh no. Look. We dont have that mechanic patented, but neither do they" execs in unison: "we know what to do"
Said it once, and I'll say it until I die: the Pokèball is just a very fancy net, and does not deserve legal protections. Signed, a pokèmon fan of 25 years.
There's 2 games I love and played the sh*t out of that had an amazing game mechanic that got patented as well. The Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor/War games. They build this incredible mechanic where (regular) enemies that defeat you become a enemy that can hunt you down, they get their own unique quirks, voice lines, remember how they killed you etc. The Nemesis system. And they decided to patent it. Imagine what kind of cool games we could've had with the Nemesis system. IMAGINE A FROMSOFT GAME WITH THE NEMESIS SYSTEM! Ideas should not be patented, they also shouldn't be blatantly copied, but definitely not patented.
I disagree that an idea shouldn't be blatantly copied. If you come up with a game all of your own, and you feel like lifting that mechanic wholesale would be a huge benefit to it, then I say why not go for it? It's a different animal to plagiarism, I'd say.
I agree with the other guy, you should be able to copy ideas. Why is it not okay to copy the concept of Pokémon? But it is OK for shooters, Racers, strategy and Platformer games to copy each other. Why is Pokémon the only genre that isn't allowed to be copied? Because If the competition were allowed to copy them, it would be a game of which game has more quality, that is a game that Nintendo doesn't want to play. Because that means fewer releases per year (less money) and would require them to try to innovate the genre (Not remove features and resell them in later installments).
The Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor is a big example of this. A very cool mechanic that has been sitting collecting dust because it was patented even though the company itself doesn't even do anything with it, they just prevent other developers from applying it to their games.
I feel like software patents in general only exist to stifle innovation and competition. I think that people should only be allowed to patent physical inventions that they made, through research and development, not concepts that anyone could come up with and make work on an afternoon on any half modern computer.
@SergioEduP Exactly. The world of software patents is 99.9% obvious crap anyone would be able to replicate without the patent document. Patents are supposed to be about preserving and disseminating technological progress. In exchange for publicly describing how to do [Thing] in a document, the patent holder gets temporary exclusive rights on doing [Thing]. When the workings of [Thing] is obvious to anyone with 2 braincells, the patent is only benefitting the holder who gets to bully others around for daring to put 2 and 2 together.
Imagine if PocketPair manages to retroactively patent major features of Nintendo games, backed by Sony (with whom they now have an open partnership and is also a Japanese company), let alone if Microsoft jumped in. Heck, just those two companies (which have both backed Palworld openly already) jumped in on the "F- Nintendo" bandwagon, it would be glorious. All three companies are dogsh*t, but I'll cheer on Darth Vader taking on Sauruman.
Also be aware that because this is in Japan. Japanese law typically disassociates "Patent" from "Court". Under most circumstances a patent is seen as a statement of fact. If you wish to argue the patent you have to go to court over the patent. The court system typically goes under the assumption that the patent is valid and the court case is not to argue the facts of the patent but to see if the facts of the patent are being infringed.
Another great comparison Ive seen is if Ubisoft patented the leap of faith, climbing to high point to unlock more of the map. It was implemented into Breath of the Wild. So if Nintendo wants to go this route, it only opens the door for other companies to sue them for the same thing.
I've read that there's a one year window for retroactively applying patents. I assume the idea is that if someone steals your idea and beats you to market then you can still file your patent and attempt to prove that in court, but in practice it just makes patent trolling bs like this a lot easier
Its not even a mic drop by his own logic. Thor said Nintendo goes after palword after its successful. WoW is not successful because of battle pets. If battle pets made palworld money they would go after it.
@@THUNDERSTUDthe revenue from selling one single mount skin in WoW rivals what some devs make on an entire project. You really don't think that the revenue from pets comes close?
@@GentlemanNietzsche No battle pets are not as popular as skins, and even if they were, that single mount skin youre talking about was compared to star craft 2s revenue. And even if battle pets did earn more than sc 2, that would still be small compared to wows general success.
That was Thor's weakest point IMO. You don't capture battle pets in a 3D open space by aiming capture devices at them like you would in PLA. You capture them like in the old Pokemon games by simply selecting a "throw capture device" option and hoping the catch is successful. There's no running around the creature involved and aiming the device, which from what I understand is what this patent is more so about. Even compared to the oldschool Pokemon capturing mechanics, WoW's version is still different. In Pokemon you have a catalogue of balls you can choose from with varying effects and catch rates which you can throw at any time you want. In WoW you have a baseline cage you can ONLY throw when the battle pet is below 35% HP. There's no catalogue of cages you can pick between (the cage's catch rate gets increased based on achievements, but there's no player choice in the matter) nor can you throw the cage whenever you want.
Reminds me how Warner Bros patented (As far as I remember. Don't know if it officially went through) the idea of enemies reacting to you and evolving over time... so y'know... dynamic character development. In terms of the example in the video, it's so vague that it could be argued to cover so much. Heck, even the idea of throwing a ROCK at an enemy's head to knock them out could fall under the patent.
Patenting video game mechanics is like patenting movie tropes. Imagine if Disney was just like, "I have patented the love triangle. No one else can put a love triangle in their movies ever again. Also, we now own the exclusive rights to the hero-to-villain/villain-to-hero character arcs. Suck it, everyone else."
There are only 7 stories, and Disney owns them all. Muahahaha!
Hero's journey? More like Disney Hero's journey now suckers!
I mean, to be fair, patenting love triangles might make side plot romances better in general...
I can actually see them trying/doing that
Honestly, I'd be all for that. not because I want Disney to own our world even more but more so that writers have to try harder and make better stories rather than sticking to the same 3 tropes
Patenting is known to be flawed. Let’s not forget the 2001 “circular transportation facilitation device”. Someone-just to show the flaws-decided to patent a wheel, while someone approved it :D
Patenting is so known to be flawed that the term "Patent Troll" exists. Enough said.
@@kaijuultimax9407Yes, "Patent Troll", someone who makes a shit ton of patents and does nothing with them just so nobody else can make similar things without paying out of the ass.
Nintendo is well known to be a patent troll already, along side Microsoft and Sony - it's just, MS and Sony don't actually defend the game mechanic patents to such a degree. Because they understand its bad for the industry and creativity.
Yeah, patenting mechanics is assanine.
@@flabort its bad for their Reputation. It has absolutely nothing to do with q
Quality of games. Especially the quality of their competitors' games. Why the heck would the company want others to succeed? Its not in it's interest.
Like one of the reccent Final V3 episodes caused me to learn that H264 video format is patented by like hundreds of people
Throwing an item in a 3D space to catch a monster was done by Ghostbusters in 1984 with the ghost trap.
gold comment
Also any game with fishing mechanics in it...
@@arcticfoxpi And there have definitely been a number of video-game adaptations of the series that implemented the mechanics, in 3D and 2D spaces
THANK YOU for pointing this out
movies are actually a different category from games and wouldn't apply
We're seeing this more and more now. It's basically like this: "The judicial process IS the punishment, not the judgement itself.".
Yep sounds like the current Billy Mitchell vs Karl Jobst suit going on right now.
And the judicial system makes so much money from it, it's incentivized to keep it that way.
@@restlessfrager true
Good old capitalism doing capitalism. You can never win by voting with your wallet.
The judicial system is a place of commerce not a place of justice
When Id made their money and Doom was starting to get old, they released rhe source code so people could learn and get even more out of the game. Could you imagine a world where Nintendo is the kind of company that releases the source code of all their games when they where 10 years old? The games in that world are probably pretty great.
Nope, those games are instead still full price lol, damn nintendo
Also cease and desisting Emulator companies.... and then they turn around and release Emulatod version of their own games at full price
There is a ray of hope here, as a few Japanese law professionals are saying that many of Nintendo's patents may be narrowed or even revoked entirely because of this lawsuit.
That's only if Pocketpair fights for long enough. If Nintendo puts enough financial pressure on through these legal shenanigans they may settle out of court without anything about Nintendo's patents being changed.
I'm not a laywer but since this case started up I have looked into Japanese patent law to see how similar it is to US patent law. Lack of novelty is still a reason for patents to be rejected and for each patent people have found that is relevant to Palworld there has been prior art that would invalidate the patent. Not a one of these patents should have been granted, but Nintendo is going to be trying to drain the coffers of Pocket Pair by stalling in the courts as long as possible to prevent it from getting to the point where these could be overturned.
honestly
i hope to god this happens
nintendo needs to face consequences for pulling this kind of shit
On the flip side, Sony might have a keen interest in giving in a hand. Whoever wins, I think players lose
@@Eric-yd9dm With enough negative press pointing at nintendo for this I could see sony going out of their way to use this to try and gain some goodwill and stick it to an aggressive market competitor. It really depends on how much value they put on stepping on nintendo's toes and if anyone in a boardroom thinks to try to use this for a pr win.
@@thehob3836 I was thinking more on the "wooo tasty precedent hehehe" side, actually
This isnt clutching pearls and protecting some property.
This is mafia behaviour. This is monopolizing market and grossly destroying competition.
It's time to boycott Nintendo.
@@Ryanowning “Like that’s ever gonna happen.”
-Shrek
I mean, considering their past, Yakuza behavior isn't too far off the mark for Nintendo.
The only reason that it is accepted is that they are doing fun games. Their behaviour is utterly malicious and they are one of the worst anti consumer companies out there.
They never release their games on other hardware than their own.
They rarely discount their games
They destroy their communities with lawsuits even if the community wants to just organize events
Their hardware is barely enough to run their games and if you want to emulate it to actually have better performance the project will get a lawsuit - even if you need to buy the game to emulate it (the recent move against emulators is probably because they will release new console soon)
@@Ryanowning let's be real here. Large majority of the "nintendo buyers" buy their games / consoles cause they're fun and have absolutely 0 knowledge or care of what's going on with Palworld (or in general what Nintendo does in court).
You think 5 angry people on reddit would cause any relevant monetary loss when Nintendo makes insane amounts of money off mainly kid products?
Nah, and they know it. They know well enough that their bullying actions in court have no economic consequence.
If I remember correctly, another Japanese gaming company Bandai Namco had a patent on "auxiliary games" until 2015, basicly minigames, during loading screens. Think about it for decades while we gamed we could have been playing a mini game while waiting for our game to load, Instead of having to stare at our screens for what sometimes could be a long ass time. I don't like it when big corporations use scummy tactics to actively make everything shittier for their benefit. Japan's court system seems like it quite often favours large corporations and the state. The conviction rate in Japanese criminal justice system is over 99%. With numbers like that something doesn't feel right.
Or how about WB and the Nemesis system? That is what they used in shadow of mordor and its sequel on the orc to make them interact with the player. How many cool game ideas could have come from this that we wont see because of them patenting it
Fun Fact: There's a "scam" that involves falsely accusing a foreigner of a crime and only releasing them from jail once they pay a bribe to a government official. Also, it's a staple for police officers to force confessions out of people. Great country that does a lot of things right, but some of the bad parts of the American system are quite emphasized for a country that's otherwise so advanced.
The Japanese legal system is unusual to be sure, and they will very likely side with a well known domestic company over some gaijin upstarts.
The worst part of that patent that no one talks about is the very real chilling effect it had on game development. Because it's been almost a decade since the patent expired and yet Bamco is still the only company that does loading screen minigames. The only good news is that with the evolution of technology, loading screens won't be around much longer anyways.
The police can also hold you indefinitely without charge.
i'm a brazilian law student, at first glance this is really dangerous not only because it opens a door for patents on simple game mechanics like a health bar, so all the games with health bar have to pay me fees, but the real danger lies in reactivity of the law suit, if there is a possibility for me to sue some one based only on a patent, like based only on a peace of paper with a date in it, ignoring the material reality allows other crazy things to happen, depending on the laws of the country it can be scratched for other stuff, like sports, i file a patent on some sport and a can sue every one who involved in that sport
Imagina patentear apito ou outros dispositivos e formas de interromper disputas esportivas. Patentear botão de pausa. Sem condições
"reactivity of the law suit" Exactly. If this precedent is set then anyone with a patent can use the derivative patent system to patent troll any other corporation within Japan. It would be complete chaos.
Who cares , usa wants to patent then it's their right
This is EXACTLY why all the game studios and devs in the 1980s agreed (in an agreement upheld to this day) that they would patent every unique mechanic in their games and then NEVER enforce them, so that no third party could come in an extort the games industry with hostile patents.
@@corpsimmons575 holy shit, then Nintendo might mean war
As they say: "Nine-year-old Paco Gutierrez always wanted a Nintendo console, but as a poor resident of Venezuela, he could only dream of one.
Thanks to his ingenuity and the help of his uncle, he was able to build a Mario game out of cardboard, as well as upload a video about it to RUclips and become famous.
After noticing the video, one of the Nintendo executives personally flew to Venezuela to serve him with a lawsuit and sue their family for 200 million."
source: trust me bro
@@haruga It's a meme, dude
@@haruga r/whoosh
Let's not forget that "Throw an object at a monster to capture it" is literally not even Game Freak's creation. They got it from Ultraseven in the 80's, and almost got sued for it and had to change the name of their game from "Capumon" to "Pokemon" in order to stop themselves from getting destroyed by a massive company.
They probably still salty from that, thats why they doing it to other small companies. Somebody needs to boycott Nintendo.
@@CHAKAT-co9lp The phrase "Somebody needs to boycott [inset thing]" is why boycotts don't work.
@@CHAKAT-co9lp Not "somebody", it's "everybody".
Just reinforces the many phrases alluding to this kind of behavior...
"Hurt people hurt people."
"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
"The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors."
So often, it seems, the levels to which people will attempt to mistreat others is directly proportional to the amount of power they have over others rather than any sense of morality or lived experiences. As much as people love an underdog, they seem to more firmly believe that "might makes right" when they are the mighty...
It's a pattern with massive companies. They'll sue you now for the stuff they did in the past. "Rules for thee, but not for me" ahh logic.
"There's no benefit to games, for doing this."
It all really did just scream almost as a spiteful getback at Pocketpair for challenging and succeeding at a game that was just made out of passion and devs that wanted to make a fun game similar to Pokemon.
Patenting mechanics is just greed and another card for companies to stay on top, it stifles creativity and is a horrible direction for games.
I'm just happy Palword is no longer a thing, but they way it went out by Nintendo is so lame I hate this company dude.
also, once again, great pfp
@@michaelstaggmick Why are you happy it's no longer a thing
Is Nintendo trying to get themselves hated as much as EA or are the trying to get on the top 10 of the "hated game company" leaderboard?
@@michaelstaggmick so you like monopolies? You like basically only one player dominating the market and in the process enshitifying the product in order to extract as much money as possible while delivering bellow the bare minimum they can get away with? Case release after release nintendo has with pokemon doing "it's ok cause it's pokemon, they will buy regardless", "oh the game runs like shit and has glitches that even indie studios manage to fix before launch? No biggie it's pokemon"
@@michaelstaggmick bait used to be good
Reminds me of the Worlds 3d developer who owns the patent for "players interacting in an online 3d environment" or something else like that, something so vague it applies to literally every 3d multiplayer game in existence
When boomers are granting patents on stuff they have no clue about lol
isnt that the guy with the "game" to prove he is actually using the patent
@@fondbeebboop9705 yea that guy
You can invalidate a patent in court if you manage to prove it's too vague and wide-reaching, but it still costs money and time. Similarly, you can invalidate a patent if you can prove the patent's mechanic was not actually invented by the patent holder, i.e. was used in other products prior to theirs.
@@fondbeebboop9705 What's it called? I'd like to learn more
If the Pokemon vs Palworld lawsuit is about the method of capture, there is a problem.
There are a TON of other games that use this method.
Ark Survival Evolved uses Cryopods
TemTem uses TemCards
Coromon uses Scanners
Nexomon uses Nexotraps
And many, many more.
In a sane country this would get thrown out in court. But the case is in Japan. Conviction rate for criminals in Japan is something insane like 99%.
They are also small in terms of funding. Palworld got big and did so very fast. Nintendo doesn't want competition like this, so they're doing what they can to stop it. @@Chestyfriend
I don't know about Ark, but the other ones don't do it in realtime in a 3D environment. Those are turn based and works like the "old" pokemon games, not Legends Arceus.
@@fiskern2241 ark is a 3D environment. As for the other games, it actually doesn't matter. From what I have gathered about game freak and Nintendo. They will go after games of similar nature if they pose a threat in one of the following ways.
1. It's too close to a release of a pokemon game
2. It makes way too much money and pulls the player base away
3. Rare occasion, the name is in use
4. The characters/monsters are not as they would like it.
3 and 4 are more for fan games really, but the point still stands
I do wonder if their patent about online cross-play is involved, it's way easier to apply to a lot of case.
Okay, real questions. What the hell do we do as international consumers to make charge in an international industry? What do we do to stop game mechanic patenting? It is destructive, it actively hurts the industry, so how do we make a difference?
@@xomvoid_akaluchiru_987
Simple, don't purchase from the offending party. If this is an egregious enough problem, move on, find other games to play. Yes, it would suck to give up Pokemon/Mario/any Nintendo IP but realistically, that's the only move average joes have against big companies: hit them in their wallets.
create a non profit organization that registers all patents we can think of for game mechanics and figure out how to "license" them for free?
Dont sell in america. No san country has software patents because it doesn't make sense
@@blackphoenixxiii9144 Adding more regarding what the average joe can do :
Not buying is the best, but buying less is still better than buying a ton. So it is still better to buy only one of their games times to times than all of them.
Be voiceful. For example tweet about your decision : "Not buying [company]'s game anymore since they did [bad stuff]". This can inspire some other people, and helps the company know why their sales are dropping, and eventually react at some point.
A french rapper said in one song "One does not destroys the system by trying to destroying it, one destroys the system by building without it.". I think this is a good thing. Give your money and time to companies/authors etc that are fair, for example by buying their games.
@@blackphoenixxiii9144 "vote with your wallets" just isn't working, we still have season passes, loot boxes, in game perchases, streak rewards, ect. Honestly, after sleeping on it, I think we should organize and form a group, have a website listening offenders, and get content creators to support the movement as spokespersons. If we want to change international law, we have to change it one nation at a time. At least in the US I can actively try pushing a bill through congress, or maybe we try a civil suit? Honestly I think a civil suit would work well if we get a bunch of figures in the industry to submit supporting amicus curiea briefs.
0:40 wasd is mine now, your move. Or lack there of! *Evil laugh
"Ha! You moved! You've fallen right into my trap!" - "Your what? I must inform you, triggered capturing mechanisms are also patented"
i guess i'll use ijkl.
Forces people to use the old Doom movement keys
😢
I can still... point, and... click!
I think a good way of getting the point across for "Should not be able to patent game mecchanics"... Is to compare it, simply, to other artforms. Imagine how many painters there would be if Picasso patented... The concept of a paintbrush. If Da Vinci patended oil based paints. If Rembrandt patented shapes on a canvas. If van gogh patented cloth canvases. That is what patenting a game mechanic is in gaming. It's patenting the very means of creating art. It's saying "No, you can't paint with a paint brush, I patented the paintbrush." And it's absolutely unacceptable.
Bad comparison because almost everyone knows about Anish Kapoor and his patented Vanta Black, a black so dark and so toxic that it looks like a void. Artists were furious that they would never get to own or use the material as Kapoor owns it for his own use only, forbidding anyone else from legally touching it.
But then, Stuart Semple created Pinkest Pink and legally forbade Kapoor from purchasing or owning it, as well as anyone else from purchasing or owning it on his behalf. When Kapoor got his hands on Pinkest Pink and stuck his middle finger in it and posted the photo online. Unfortunately, Semple didn't sue because he's pretty poor compared to Kapoor. He did, however, make Black 2.0 and 3.0, as well as Diamond Dust (a paint filled with glass, so don't stick your finger in it!) and none are available to Kapoor for purchase, only literally everyone else.
So, the lesson here is spite, I think. If someone rich stops you from doing something, smash your way around them and make them feel stupid and ashamed, then hit them back by disallowing them specifically from using your products. Reject patent; become Semple.
@@conspiracypanda1200 the problem with that is that the colors are a product not a mechanics within, the comparison to our scenario with palworld would be if any of the steps made to created the void black was patented thus no one could even use it again to create their own stuff
Possibly a better analogy than art would be medicine... as we can clearly see the difference in how non-patented medicine has helped the world compared to patented ones.
For example, compare the polio vaccine to the smallpox vaccine. The polio vaccine was not patented, was invented in the 1950's, and rendered the disease nearly extinct within 30 years. The smallpox vaccine WAS patented, was invented in 1796, and the disease wasn't exterminated until 1980... nearly TWO HUNDRED years later. Coincidence?
Another example is tuberculosis. There are both vaccines and cures for tuberculosis, all of which are patented. More people die from untreated tuberculosis than any other infectious disease. Those deaths are completely unnecessary... except that allowing 1.5 million unnecessary deaths each year protects the bottom line of several companies.
I get that the world is filled with liars and cheats. I get that some people will steal just about anything for personal gain at the expense of the original creator. But patenting something in such a way that even the methods you used for its creation are legally barred from everybody is like killing your own cattle to prevent their theft. It is sad when it comes to art, it is stifling when it comes to games, it is immoral when it comes to medicine.
@@conspiracypanda1200 Patents also typically have an expiratiion - I think it's about 20 years? It's not to stop competition completely, it's to delay them. Thanks to this, you can now freely implement "ghost racer" or "mini game while waiting for load" mechanics into your game and not pay anyone anything. Licenses are a different beast - they don't expire, and are typically bought by business people, when companies approach their bancrupty, to ask people to pay up, should they infringe on them. Example would be take downs of anything that's straight up copy of a tetris.
@@conspiracypanda1200 That's a very different issue, Vantablack is a very specific material with a complex manufacturing process, that is what is patented, and it's very common. None of the outcry is about Surrey patenting their creation. The outcry is that Kapoor got an *exclusive license* in the field of arts, so no other artist can license VB for their own pieces.
I cast “Patent WASD” and “Patent movement via analog sticks” and “Patent Steering Wheel movement” and “Patent Joystick”! Now EVERYONE owes me money!
everyone having to go back to doom-style controls with arrow keys for movement... PATENT THAT TOO
I cast "Patent Movement in general"!!!
Good luck suing me when you can't even move a hand to produce necessary documents.
Check mate!
@@NanakiPL HA! You activated my trap card! I use hand movement for no monetary gain and for informational purposes! I’ll sue you… to donate to charity!
@@vincenty541 Oh no! Charity!!! My only weakness!!
@@NanakiPL don’t worry, you can write it off of your taxes, so it’s only partially effective Kappa
Oh, nonono. They wouldn't go after Activision. Their executives attend each others' cocaine yacht parties.
I remember as a kid, I played those DBZ Budokai games that would have a lil button mash mini game during the loading screens. Vegeta does push-ups, Goku eats food, etc. I always wondered why other games didn't have stuff like that during loading screens. I figured it was because they just didn't want to or didn't think of it.
Turns out, Bandai patented the mechanic so that only their games could have stuff like that.
I say this as a Nintendo fan;
God I hope this goes as south as PHYSICALLY POSSIBLE.
I along with the rest of the industry NEEDS patenting gameplay mechanics to be made not legal.
It's time to boycott Nintendo.
@@Ryanowningwhy ever give such an evil company your money, whether for console, platform, or game?
@@Ryanowning It's been over a year for me. Between everything they've done to ruin the industry, and everything they'd done to destroy their fans... I can't justify giving them my money anymore, and that's not counting the absolute dogwater that is their console and games lately.
@@Zyartidk the recent games and switch weren’t bad. Botw and totk are both highly acclaimed, I wouldn’t say a switch is for everyone but it fits its place well enough
You can really see the duality of a company here, and what it's truly like.
On one side, Nintendo has genius developers who have been producing, technically and in terms of polish, the best games on the market since the '80s, with only a few falling slightly below this incredibly high standard. On the other side, it's a greedy, outdated company that sues everyone, especially modders and programmers behind amazing fan projects, relentlessly targets emulation sites, and uses some of the worst technology for its online services. That's why I've learned never to idolize a company like a fanboy, whether it's Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, or any other, big or small.
The Nemesis System in the Shadow of Mordor/War games. Patented & then never utilized by WB or any other game studios.
The closest thing we got was the Hunt system in the later RPG Assassin's Creed which was half baked to avoid lawsuit & Watch_Dogs: Legion which admittedly does something interesting with the nemesis system by having it that you recruit the characters rather than fight them, However it's a Ubisoft game so the overall quality was pretty blurry.
Warframe's Lich/Sisters mechanic was a nemesis, and they had to significantly reduce the interactions to avoid a lawsuit.
That one specifically infuriates me because it could have been *revolutionary* if people were actually allowed to use and refine it into a standard feature.
Big thing is that people can do a similar system but make sure it's different enough to screw over WB.
The Nemesis system always comes up in this context and for good reason. That's something that could be used to make sooo many cool and interesting games, but only one publisher can do it now. Imagine the cool stuff that the indie or AA community could have done with that concept that we will never get to experience now
You can build a similar system if you work around the wording. Note the patent explicitly says enemies and nemisis system. Okay well I have the rememberance ai system and it randomly generates every object in the game. The files of the game store encounters with other objects and objects related to these encounters can access this file to iterate on previous encounters. It's all in wording.
@@ytivarg5371that Is so stupid, no way in hell can that be patented
@@MGrey-qb5xz Brother, they did this years ago - Patent US20160279522A1
@@MGrey-qb5xz Did i ever say patent it. No, its a description for a system to get around warner brothers patent
I know the part at the end about them going after blizzard was kind of a joke, but I feel like that should be a valid option. If the developers of palworld were to contact developers of other games with the same/similar mechanics that Nintendo is attempting to patent they may be able to bring some back up to this fight. Basically, since Nintendo is being greedy and predatory send somebody even greedier and more predatory after them.
Kinda hard to imagine Nintendo going after Blizzard over that. Sounds like it would cost too much to win too little. So I gotta ask, why would Blizzard bother helping?
@@hugofontes5708 exactly because it would cost too much and win too little. I’m not saying it has to be blizzard, but the principal is still the same. You have one company effectively trying to take a mechanic that many others have used. And they will likely want to keep using it. Especially if they can profit from it, and considering multiple have already made profit from games with similar mechanics, they’re likely not happy to give up those profits. Simply having them come to the table would probably be enough to have Nintendo drop the whole thing. It would basically be showing Nintendo that it would be more risk than it’s worth.
@@vex9895 right, but doesn't Nintendo have to go sue them one by one? Why would any of them bother right now? They are big enough to discourage a bully attrition lawsuit now as much as later, the only ones I could see banding are either already involved or much smaller than Nintendo and need help too
@@hugofontes5708 the thing is if they win this case that just gives them more power to win other cases. Because that would set a legal precedent. Basically the more they win now the more they are going to win later. So it might be in those other companies best interest to stop it now.
@@vex9895 but court bullying goes both ways even if they win. They might have a sure win but burn too much anyway to be worth upfront
Out of all the consoles the only one I was ever considering was the Switch. Since I heard a potential successor was coming out, I was planning on getting it.
Though, not anymore. If a company wants to patent a broad mechanic, I refuse to give them even a bit of my support.
"throwing a ball at a monster in a 3D space"
sorry guys but grenades are off the menu for any video game with monsters now
I think there is a component of capturing said monster, as well as a component of uncertainty in the capture (i.e. every throw doesn't result in capture)... so i don't think grenades count.
@@Raviispretty sure it is the broad aiming mechanism and isn’t specifically about catching anything. It’s been awhile since I read them, but they own a lot of bogus patents like the better balls being represented by colors (as if mobile game rarity isn’t a thing), the bonus from back hits, increased % based on HP and status effects. Things that RPGs have done all the time.
It’s not about winning in court. It’s about bleeding the competition dry and forcing a settlement that will neuter Pocket Pair. This is what is meant by they never lose. They don’t always win in judgement but they’re better than everyone else at manipulating the system to litigate their opponent to death. They’ve done this before to other devs and companies.
@@blurgalsklech2929 I hope they launch a go fund me to support them
@@blurgalsklech2929 Considering Sony was looking at buying PocketPair, they might end up creating another monster
Warner Bros with their Nemesis system. One of the best features of any game I've played, and now it's locked away, likely to never be used again and we all miss out.
That expires August 11, 2036. 11 years, 9 months and 25 days from today.
Also people seem to be interpreting that patent way too broadly. For example, the patent specifies that the non-player is part of a faction with an ranked hierarchy.
If you read the patent for the nemesis system is really, really specific and other more modern games have done similar things. You basically need enemies to remember you after you die and gain status based on those interactions, including developing a personality.
You need a game where you have an excuse to not permanently die for that kind of system to work and Legacy of Kain is probably the only series I can think of where it would work well.
AC Odessey had a similar thing with their bounty hunters but since you never came back from death and they never developed a personality the patent didn't apply to them.
@@ericm5315 that's literally the point of ppl being sad this is pattented.
"You basically need enemies to remember you after you die and gain status based on those interactions, including developing a personality."
That's the whole thing. a LOT of games would have been awesome with that mechanic.
"You need a game where you have an excuse to not permanently die for that kind of system to work and Legacy of Kain is probably the only series I can think of where it would work well."
There are a lot of solution to this. A allied npc save you last minute, you teleport away, wathever works.
@@ericm5315 I don't know which rock you live under, but Hades is a thing now. Dead Cells before that. In fact, this mechanic would have been awesome in so many roguelikes/roguelites/roguewhatevers. Several entries in Prince of Persia have you never die.
hopefully warner bros goes bankrupt, honestly it's well deserved at this point.
warner bros suck ass!!!
Thor: "WASD is mine now, Gamers. Your move"
Gamers: "But... we can't move now"
Golden 😂
But seriously, it sucks because there's literally nothing people can do about this bs. Nintendo is just too powerful to stop at this point, and all we can do is attempt to make people stop buying from nintendo (which is impossible) or pray that the judge in this case sides with the smaller company, which is unlikely because nintendo has unlimited money and scummy tactics to keep the lawsuit going until either palworld loses, or goes bankrupt from legal fees.
I feel like the real power move here would be for the Palworld devs to pay their animators to redesign the capture devices as cubes, and have them be projected at targets via various golf clubs or croquet mallets instead. Now we're no longer violating the patent.
Unfortunately they might have like sixty more of those patents. Like training your monsters and them evolving. Or whatever other shit
I highly disagree as that would be just Palworld giving in. In other words every other dev should be afraid of similar lawsuits.
That would be an admission of guilt on their part, it will make thing worst for them.
@@NicromeShooter They're probably not going to win purely because Nintendo can keep throwing money at the suit until Palworld loses by no longer being able to continue. But a solution like this would mean circumventing the terms of the patent and spitting in Nintendo's eye because they don't want to protect their patent, they want to shut down the competition.
What if they just lowered the poly count of the spheres and called something like a pal Icosahedron
This isn’t the only patent btw, we don’t know the specific patents sued on yet but it’s theorized about this among others like the mounting of animals and being able to land and dismount. Nintendo also owns seeing a silhouette of your PC when obscured from vision btw.
Palworld Entertainment or whatever might be helpful in this lawsuit. Sony Music and Aniplex (both Sony) may ensure it doesn’t come to a “running out of money” situation.
But yea this is terrible for all. And even if it’s Japanese court, it will still deter small devs from risking trying mechanics like this worldwide because they’ll be afraid to get sued. Small studios can’t pay a patent attorney to shift through thousands if not hundreds of thousands of patents before doing anything.
TPC/Nintendo are patent trolls and gross.
Aight, time for it to go bankrupt. I know it won't but it's time
If Nintendo wins it means that anyone can use derivative patents to backdate enforceable dates. Do you have any idea the level of chaos that would cause? Anybody with any patent and holdings in Japan could just change their previous patents to whatever they like and sue others over patent infringement. The Japanese economy would collapse because all business would be a massive legal risk.
Nintendo is screwed here.
In 1994, Namco made Ridge Racer for the PS1. The devs were worried about the load times, and so added the game Galaxian that people could play during loading screens. Namco (and then Bandai-Namco, when they merged) patented this mechanic. They never used it again. The patent expired in 2015, too bad the industry totally forgot this idea ever existed. Patenting Game Mechanics never is good for anything other then the Corporation that does it. Like WB patenting the Nemesis system, though it is supposed to be used in the Wonder Woman Game Monolith is making, assuming WB doesn't shut it down for a Tax Write Off, of course.
Namco did use the mechanic at least once after Ridge Racer. Tekken 5 allowed you to play Starblade during the initial load screen. It still shouldn't have been patented as there were other mini-games used in load screens before their patent in 1995.
Thanks that's the patent I was trying to remember. For decades I have wanted an RPG that lets me mess with inventory while it loads, and this is why we never got one.
Some Dragon Ball games also had some mashing minigames in the loading screens.
I wanted to point this example out for people since it's a really good example of a patent killing a mechanic from flourishing in the games industry, props to you for doing it for me and better than I could've lol.
what was invade-a-load
I don't think Nintendo has any legs on this realistically, I just think it's a war of attrition. That being said, this is Japan and their patent laws are probably very different from what we might be used to. Nintendo is also old and established, which is the one thing that's gold above money in Japan.
agreed. This i think is why nintendo was able to push the sub-patents through so fast(the patent filing even states it was fast-tracked). Nintendo is a big and old name, and that kind of thing has weight in Japan
They don't have any right morally to that and in countries like USA they would lose, but it's Japan. Japan is weird. For example in Japan if you say something bad about a company it's defamation, even if what you said is truthful and not even exaggerated nor malicious. If it did damage to the company you lose.
Funny country
The problem is that Japan has an even worse problem of mega corporations controlling their government than even America does. The answer to me would be that Palworld moves its hq to USA or something
the only actual reason they have any power in this is because they're both japanese companies and so they can use japanese law to their advantage. Nintendo is bullying them out with local laws.
These are actually valid patents in Japan. According to their patent law you can subdivide an existing, broader patent into smaller, more specific patents, and their effective date is retroactive to the original parent latent. It doesn’t matter if these new patents came out after palworld, the original parent patent was before palworld and that’s all that matters. The Japanese courts will agree, this isn’t the first time it’s happened.
The really bad part is that due to international treaties these new patents are enforceable in America as well as the vast majority of the world.
From what I’ve heard (from not lawyers) is that they had the patent a very long time ago. iirc, it was in the 90’s. They filed a different kind of lawsuit after palword’s release. This kind of patent is to “clarify” the language of the old patent or to separate multiple concepts that the first patent covered. The kicker about this type of patent is that (per the written law) this new/revised patent takes effect from the date of the original patent. This is because its purpose is to “clarify” language of the old patent. They used this new patent to write specific language that describes palword to a tee. They 100% did this to “get back” at pocket pair but they actually (allegedly) followed the law in doing so. They now have a brand new patent that can be enforced as far back as the 90’s… truely aweful
And this is why Nintendo will fail, because if this is allowed then anybody with any patent can use derivative patents to backdate the enforceable date of the changes. It will be pure chaos, every single business in Japan will have massive legal liability.
And Christ...think of the angry nerds of means who are gonna abuse this to high hell and back to make Nintendo pay big time. Because they will. This is Pandora's box for Japan and Nintendo is trying to force that thing open.
a big reason why game companies patent random things like this is because back in the arcade days small companies would patent things that they saw in other games and then sue the company (pretty much what nintendo is doing now) so the company would patent every little feature in the game just to avoid being sued by someone else in the future. they can (and have) been used maliciously but theres an honour code which companies dont break. funny enough this same thing happened to nintendo themselves before so now we get to see the tables turn.
My example for this is, I think that more games could benefit from the mechanic in Middle Earth: Shadow of war nemesis system. We could have had some really cool games with that mechanic in it but WB locked that down. Now while I like Shadow of War I played it now I am done, I haven't seen that in any other games (please let me know if there are other games). A very interesting game choice locked to 1 game and at the time of me posting this it has 4 viewers on twitch what a complete waste of everything that went into designing this just so you can be the only owner of that. 1000% not a great move for the gaming industry.
EDIT: Watching the video I see all the comments in the chat for this as well
The only game iirc that's in development with that system is the wonder woman game that seems to be going through development issues. 😭
We had Black and White too, with their gesture recognition mechanic. Loved that game.
The closest thing I can think of right now is the XCOM 2 Chosen but it isnt quite as complex
Yep! And now they're just sitting on it.
Never played that game, how did the Nemesis system work?
Not a patent lawyer, but have researched the subject due to the situation. From what I've seen, this isn't as much a slam dunk as Nintendo's record might indicate. The patent can be challenged, and one of the grounds is Prior art. You have to read the claims of the Patent, as that's what's protected. However, if you can show that each of the claims is not new, then it can invalidate the Patent. Furthermore, Pocket Pair doesn't need an example that checks off every single claim, but just needs to show that each claim has been done before in the gaming industry.
Considering the fact that the pokeball concept has been used since the 90s, the patent shouldn't hold up. Not even the use in 3d would either due to prior games released on the n64/gamecube. This is more of a case involving technology anyway, so the software is the only thing that can be patented. The pokemon brand falls under trademark and copyright law, not patent law.
Exactly, the "first to patent" talking point doesn't make sense to me because the thing in question has to be a novelty which Nintendo does not have. The Palworld trailers themselves could invalidate the patents since they would be considered documenting that idea, not to mention the many examples of games that use those idea beforehand too.
@@billyparker5974 It's not the pokeball concept, it's the explicit method of throwing a pokeball as you'd see in Legends Arceus that are the patent claims.
@@sirmcpablo7349 What you'd assume Novelty to mean, and what the Legal standard of Novelty means are two different things.
From my understanding, the legal standard of Novelty is met, simply because it's a new direction for the Pokemon Franchise. I don't agree with it, but that's the standards we're working with.
First to Patent doesn't matter, because most of the claims can be pieced out and fit generic mechanics applied in most video games.
@tylerbarse2866 Throwing a capturing device at a creature is not a novelty and has been done numerous times in video games in the public space. There's no assumptions about it.
It feels like Nintendo just cracked open Pandora's box. Now imagine other companies looking at this and thinking, "Wait, you can do that?" and suddenly everyone's patenting the most random stuff. It could honestly be the beginning of the end for gaming as we know it. But if things ever got that bad, I bet we'd see the first global gamer protest, with developers and maybe even some companies joining in. Hopefully, it would lead to the complete elimination of the ability to patent game mechanics altogether. It would definitely turn into something huge.
Power Drift was a kart racer that released years before Mario Kart, and that was made by Sega...
This is no big news, from what I understand a lot of companies simply don't do this though, because the big ones know this can be exploited, and thus have taken their own measures to prevent this from happening. I recommend you search information about the case with Nintendo vs Colopl to see how this usually works.
Rather than throwing balls, Palworld should turn them into cubes. lol
You absolutely nailed it. They are out for $$$ and it's sickening. It should be illegal to patent Game mechanics, no different than patenting music instruments to make music.
If someone can use great and interesting game mechanics BETTER and make a better game, then it is absolutely in the interest of the consumer.
These companies don't make a dime without the gamers and if they make crap, we don't buy. Why would they feel motivated to make good stuff, if all they do is block other devs from using great mechanics in more artistic, meaningful or captivating ways.
I really hope that if Nintendo wins the lawsuit, Ubisoft will come after them for copying the synchronize mechanic from assassin's creed used in botw
That could only happen if Ubisoft has a patent on that mechanic (I don't think they do but I might be wrong)
And then Rocksteady can go after Ubisoft for lifting Arkham Asylum's combat system wholesale for Asscreed.
@@SergioEduP Apparently it's never too late
Ubisoft has that partnership with them to release that Mario+Rabbids shit.
might be a way for Ubisoft to finally make revenue!
Imagine patenting chord progressions in music, slow motion action scenes in movies, rhetorical devices in literature, cooking techniques for cooking... so dumb.
The reason we have amazing, endless creations in everything is because we can use known/same/similar concepts in new ways and combinations.
Unfortunately chord progressions don't need to be patented because the copyright system and its overreach have already made it so you can't use "too similar" of a progression.
Just imagine the discourage for new developers wanting to make new games, and now they have to worry about not copying mechanics in order to not be sued by Nintendo and ruin their lives, just imagine Nintendo patented Super Metroid mechanics 30 years ago and the amount of great games that could not exist today.
What we may be witnessing here is the end of videogames as we know it folks, and the greatest irony with this is that Nintendo saved the videogame industry back in the 80s, and Nintendo could easily destroy that same industry with this behavior.
thats kinda already true isnt it? whatever is a patent cant be used...
@@soirema in the US, yeah. In Japan, things are a lot more blurry.
Essentially the japanese game industry has enough patents from the years to bury eachother in litigation for infringement IF THEY WANTED TO. They don't.
They basically have a public code of honor where they're allowed to use eachothers stuff, so long as its not explicit. Examples include Dragon Quest, Pokemon, etc.
There was previously a case where Nintendo sued the company Colopl for attempting to bully smaller devs into paying to use their "Punycon" control scheme. It wasn't heavily covered in the West. Go look up the details.
@@GokuSS400 theres no such thing as honor in business lol, its just mutually assured destruction
Almost right BUT not quite. Since Nintendo filed the patent request AFTER the fact it would be more like if Nintendo patented the Metroid mechanic NOW and sued every game company that every used it (In the last 30 years) into bankruptcy. Let that sink in...
It's like imagine if Sony patented the mechanic of "swinging" because of their game Spiderman
I havent seen anyone bring this up but "Lost Kingdoms II" was a game in 2003 that has an item called the Capture Card. You throw it at a monster in 3d space, and that monster gets turned into a card you can then send out to use/summon the monster. if thats the patent theyre going after, theyre kinda 21 years too late.
I mess around with third party d&d creation. It was my understanding you can't patent individual board game mechanics you can't patent what dice are being used you can't say that that using 4D6 or a d20 is specifically your games mechanic.
Kind of weird that this is going to be allowed in a more complex medium.
I don't know the case where this was decided obviously but pretty sure there's been precedent to protect other board game companies against this sort of lawsuit.
"Your move"
No we can't, you just patented it.
That is the only way AAA games and companies can fight indie space/smaller studios. They can't make better games so they sue them. That will make the world better for sure
If it comes to that, I'll dig up old games and play only those. Won't even look at patent hogs new releases
To your final remark: Thing is, this is Japanese law. PocketPair and Nintendo are Japanese companies, doing business out of Japan. Blizzard isn't.
Suing PocketPair is a local lawsuit, suing Blizzard would be an international lawsuit which is way different. Think of it: How many truly international lawsuits do we see each month? or rather, year? As soon as multiple different systems of law get involved, things get complicated and at least some politics bleeds in. Nintendo knows that, and as long as we internationally don't violate Nintendo's copyrights (the laws of which are internationally very similar) they pretty much can't touch us. We can't sell in Japan, for sure, but everywhere else we can.
So what's happening here in reality is that Japan is beginning to run the risk of being isolated from the international markets.
As a Melee player, Nintendo is an absolute monster even when there isn't money involved. I've never seen such jealous behavior from such a high standing organization, it's unreal how it feels like petty high school drama sometimes.
It should be noted that Nintendo just opened a new position for IP lawyer earlier this week. This will continue beyond Palworld and I hope Palworld wins so that it can potentially quell Nintendo's legal bloodlust
Patenting a game mechanic to choke out new developers would be like chopping an artists hands off who uses an established style by another master.
Great take and we appreciate a non-biased review of the issue from a developer pov.
reminds me of when the nemisis system was patented, imagine what games could be doing today with that.
And now for my latest patent on the color blue. If you use the color blue, or any color derived from blue, you are now infringing on my patent and I get to waste the court's time over it.
If I was Palworld I would patent some odd mechanic of theirs and counter sue in japans courts, but to fund it I would do crowd sourcing, like "help us sue nintendo" edition dlc
I would also verbatim their arugements in the opposing court, under the same judge if possible
@@smartwatchonpluto I wouldn’t mind a color shift DLC that parents the mechanic of generating rare alternate color creatures able to be capture.
They would lose since the japanese courts would side with the japanese company. Prioritize the state/nationalism over legal correctness.
I would buy It right away
the problem is that given the original patent for Arceus dates back to 2021, Japanese patent law is on the side of Nintendo. In a court of law, that's what matters.
Now if you filed a new patent and then tried to sue nintendo, you'd be laughed out of court because a patent filed in 2024 or later, will have no enforceable means on prior Nintendo titles.
Additionally gaming devs in Japan are in the habit of patenting everything in case someone tries to use the patents against them; its been a thing since the 80s.
@@GokuSS400 But as Thor stated Palworld existed before the patent itself. That suit falls flat if the catching mechanic already existed in the product before the patent itself.
there is a tactic with patents where you let the opposition spend money and then let them run into the knife later. you can keep a patent secret and dont have to show the patent right away when you see someone else come up with the same idea.
something like this happens in engeneering for medical equipment more often than you would think.
then again. my mind is with two teams comming up with the same idea independently, one team being faster filing a patent and the other team gets told some months into trying to get the same patent
There are a few companies that have patented mechanics already, one of the most infamous ones being Namco establishing itself as the only company that was allowed to put minigames in loading screens between 1995 and 2015.
Another patent that is still in effect is on WB Games' Nemesis system in the Lord of the Rings Shadow of ____ Games, which doesn't expire until 2035. WB Games themselves haven't used this mechanic in a game in 8 years.
The weirdest part of the whole thing is that you can't do this in the board game space as there are clauses against trying to claim ownership of mechanics or rules without tangibility, so that kind of thing doesn't happen.
Games Workshop works around this by presenting their Warhammer army rulebooks with the Art and lore of the faction first, thus providing the tangibility to charge $50 to access an army's mechanics. But that is the case of a company exploiting a loophole and not the norm for the industry.
Yet another instance of where you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.
What's frustrating is that Nintendo could've made a better Palworld on their own, but would never have bothered until Palworld proved it's success. Now they'd be better off just buying the company outright instead of burying them with a lawsuit.
How can you patent a real life mechanic being used in a game ... what have fishermen been doing for 1000's of years? ...
lawsuits like these are troubling because they set precedents. Future lawsuits by bad actors will reference this lawsuit to make their case in court. Yes you can patent game mechanics and yes it's very damaging to the industry because a game can pioneer a novel mechanic and instead of it spawning an entire genre (which is one of the main things driving growth, studios, jobs, and diversity in games) it will instead lock it down to a specific developer or publisher and they can just sit on it or the mechanic will never come to market if a certain project goes south.
Notable examples of game mechanics that have been patented:
The nemesis system in Shadow of Mordor.
Many games have attempted to implement this system (it's really cool) only to be shut down because the patent rights belong to the publisher of SOM.
Apparently the parkour system in Assassins Creed iirc.
Supposedly when the gameplay trailer for Shadow of Mordor came out they themselves got called out by Ubisoft over their climbing/traversal system which took very obvious inspiration from AC. I don't remember if any actual litigation came from it, but it was certainly close and I think since then Ubisoft has attempted to patent their parkour mechanic.
Ubisoft doesn't seem to have any patent related to parkour but they have a bunch of patents on controllers/using instruments as controllers.
They apparently have a patent on sending a invite to a friend to play a multiplayer game ...
I think the "that they initiated" is important here. If companies sue Nintendo before Nintendo has a chance to sue them first they have a much higher chance of success, see Lewis Galoob Toys, Inc. v. Nintendo of America, Inc.
Im glad this is happening in Japanese court at least because this becoming legal prescedent in the United States or EU would be scary
There are international treaties and other agreements that could possibly allow this Japanese ruling to be upheld against other companies overseas. You notice how every website now nags you about cookies despite you not being in the EU? Just because you are not in their legal jurisdiction does not mean you will not be affected.
1:59 That's false actually, they lost a lawsuit in 2019 against company "ALLONE", a switch cover manufacturer which was accused of using too many elements from the console in their marketing. The whole "they patented capturing creatures" is also very exaggerated, if you read the actual patent you will see that it is much more specific to the way you capture pokemon in Legends Arceus, to the degree that in order to violate the patent you would need: the same aiming system, the same camera system, the same interactions between 2 creatures, the same interaction between creatures and the environment in regards to resource gathering, the same turn based combat system initiated by said interaction system. It becomes clear that they didn't patent "the monster collector genre", but Pokemon Legends Arceus, i agree that you shouldn't be able to patent game mechanics and i would argue that palworld doesn't violate the patent in question. I still feel that this video was partially biased or not based on a thorough research.
To the point of this lawsuit should be illegal. This is the concept of a SLAPP suit and is illegal with even Anti-slapp laws in some states in the US. Not sure about Japan.
This reminds me of the people who patented playing a video or minigame during loading screens back in the 90s.
Blame Namco for that one
Bandai Namco, it was the early 2000s, and the patent had prior art from the Commodore 64 that nobody noticed.
I just popped in to say that that opening thumbnail graphic is completely unfactual Nintendo currently has a dude who can only eat and live off of charity because any penny he earns goes to them.
Guess who decided his payday: Nintendo
I really hope the attention this is getting can hopefully get a bunch of people to rise up and get change to the patenting of mechanics. These companies are powerful but surely with enough people under a common goal change can happen.
I'll do you one better, Red Dead Redemption was revealed in 2009 and has a horse taming mechanic that fits into Nintendo's patent. On top of that Sony is Pocket Pair's sugar daddy and Sony has an agenda against Nintendo.
Thor, you should investigate the Japanese side of things
It seems clear to me that the individuals who approve the patents have absolutely no knowledge of the topic on hand. Patents in general are a very flawed concept and having them be inappropriately administered makes the problem even worse.
Patent mechanics is absurd. This means I can patent how moving the character works, and therefore, any game with movable characters will have to pay me royalties, or else you'll have to code another way to move your characters, basically I'm taking control over how to vector the directional of your character in a general velocity from point A to point B, this means we can't have no more games with movable characters, that's stupid.
it's beyond stupid, it's godawful with INTENT
Patents in software are stupid in general, like how many years ago literary putting multiple program windows on top of each other was a lawsuit (I'm pretty sure)
I see what your saying, but the patent mechanic has to have novelty for it to go through, as in its 'unique', no other games or whatever have/is using that mechanic. So we are safe on that front.
@@TwoWayOrbitalStation If you read Nintendo's patent it basically describes how to throw a projectile in a 3D space. If you shoot an arrow with a bow you are doing the same. This is NOT "unique" it's literally how you throw projectiles in a 3D environment, the only difference is the "capture" thing, but the "capture" thing isn't from Pokemon, there are multiple games predeceasing the capture mechanic.
@@TwoWayOrbitalStationJapanese patent law is different. That's the issue.
Legal Mindset has a good video explaining exactly how Nintendo is pulling this off, and why they will likely win. To terribly summarize, they had a broad patent before that somewhat slightly covered this, but after palworld got popular, they split that patent into child patents which lets you specify further what each feature means, however, it will still be effective back when the parent patent was effective. he describes it as a malicious move that is purposefully gaming the system.
In recent years I have been becoming more and more dissatisfied with Nintendo as a whole and this doesn't help. Regardless of if you like palworld or not, Nintendo in Japan is overly protecting their IP. The way they think is very different than how others overseas might think. So to them, they are not doing anything malicious, all they are doing is protecting their IP in any way possible, which is potentially killing any sort of new innovation. something that came from DragonQuest before them.
Surely their patents have expired by now? Original pokemon came out in 1996, the patents associated with it should be almost a decade expired; this is true of any patents filing between 1996 and 2004 by the way, so any of their patents from then should be expired based off standard length of term of patents.
@@VaprousIt likely extends the duration by another patent length each time it is done, similar to Disney continually extending their copyrights.
@@impishlyit9780 why comment if you have no idea what you're talking about?
If they win then anybody with a patent can just use derivative patents to patent troll within Japan. It'll be total chaos, all business will essentially be held hostage.
If Nintendo wins Japan loses and Japan will possibly get excluded from the international patent alliance or whatever the hell they officially call it as they just enabled massive fraudulent patent filings.
It's really funny then that they got their start in video games winning a lawsuit from universal because according to universal Donkey Kong was too similar to King Kong.
2:00 Didn't Nintendo lose the rights battle for Kong over the original Jump Man Mario game?
One of my favorite examples of this is that loading screens used to have a game or some fidget function, until one company patented that and then years after there isn't anything on loading screens.
Better take it up with Black Myth: Wukong then, where you catch nearly every boss you kill to be able to transform into all 72 of them! 😅
Unless you throw a ball at the boss to catch it, it doesn't violate the patent nor serve as prior art.
@@SuperSmashDolls Their patent says nothing about a ball, it simply a capture mechanic requiring an item. There are 31+ claims for the patent, when I was going over it the first 19 could be summed up as common game mechanics. FF7 would defeat most of them, the legend of Zelda games from the 80s and 90s could defeat most of them.
I hate Nintendo so much. Spiteful, childish compony stuck in the past, hates anything that’s not theirs. They’d sue a child for having a Mario themed birthday party
If that party made lots of money, you bet nintendo will be coming for that child
Them and Disney must get along at parties.
@@Raviis you think either of them get invited to parties?
They take pride in their integrity, and how they've stood firm against an increasingly anti-customer industry. But now they've gone too far, and that image is starting to slip enough for the public to see who they really are.
@@wontonschannel Someone needs to make a fanfiction of corporations as humans, that would be a horrifyingly hilarious spectacle. Everyone gets to be a rich narcissistic sociopath competing for popularity in their own ways.
Nintendo is literally engaging in the well known process we call "patent trolling".
"Your honor we're just being silly"
Nintendo fanboys: "I don't care. Don't ruin my fun! I just want more games! I need to feed my hedonistic lifestyle"
I boycotted blizz for like 6 years and even today I still won't give them my money. If Nintendo thinks i'll let this shit slide they're about to be very wrong 😡
Nintentdo: "oh no theyre usin pokeballs in Palworlds"
>other exec: "isnt that ours?"
>> exec b: "It has to be we trademarked and copyrighted everyting to do with pokemon"
>>>junior exec: "oh no. Look. We dont have that mechanic patented, but neither do they"
execs in unison: "we know what to do"
Said it once, and I'll say it until I die: the Pokèball is just a very fancy net, and does not deserve legal protections. Signed, a pokèmon fan of 25 years.
This is absolutely horrifying, and worst of all is Nintendo is gonna win. There's nothing I or anyone can do to stop this.
There's 2 games I love and played the sh*t out of that had an amazing game mechanic that got patented as well. The Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor/War games. They build this incredible mechanic where (regular) enemies that defeat you become a enemy that can hunt you down, they get their own unique quirks, voice lines, remember how they killed you etc. The Nemesis system. And they decided to patent it. Imagine what kind of cool games we could've had with the Nemesis system. IMAGINE A FROMSOFT GAME WITH THE NEMESIS SYSTEM! Ideas should not be patented, they also shouldn't be blatantly copied, but definitely not patented.
I disagree that an idea shouldn't be blatantly copied. If you come up with a game all of your own, and you feel like lifting that mechanic wholesale would be a huge benefit to it, then I say why not go for it? It's a different animal to plagiarism, I'd say.
I agree with the other guy, you should be able to copy ideas. Why is it not okay to copy the concept of Pokémon? But it is OK for shooters, Racers, strategy and Platformer games to copy each other. Why is Pokémon the only genre that isn't allowed to be copied? Because If the competition were allowed to copy them, it would be a game of which game has more quality, that is a game that Nintendo doesn't want to play. Because that means fewer releases per year (less money) and would require them to try to innovate the genre (Not remove features and resell them in later installments).
"Ideas should not be patented, they also shouldn't be blatantly copied, but definitely not patented." how do you propose enforcement then?
The Nemesis system from Shadow of Mordor is a big example of this. A very cool mechanic that has been sitting collecting dust because it was patented even though the company itself doesn't even do anything with it, they just prevent other developers from applying it to their games.
was waitting a good bit of your though about the palworld lawsuit video
I'm going to patent the concept of jumping into pipes with characters to move them into a different area, your move nintendo.
Do it
Video game patents shouldnt be allowed at all
I feel like software patents in general only exist to stifle innovation and competition. I think that people should only be allowed to patent physical inventions that they made, through research and development, not concepts that anyone could come up with and make work on an afternoon on any half modern computer.
@SergioEduP Exactly. The world of software patents is 99.9% obvious crap anyone would be able to replicate without the patent document.
Patents are supposed to be about preserving and disseminating technological progress.
In exchange for publicly describing how to do [Thing] in a document, the patent holder gets temporary exclusive rights on doing [Thing].
When the workings of [Thing] is obvious to anyone with 2 braincells, the patent is only benefitting the holder who gets to bully others around for daring to put 2 and 2 together.
mb patents shouldnt be existed at all ? then there will be more stimulus to innovate constantly
Imagine if PocketPair manages to retroactively patent major features of Nintendo games, backed by Sony (with whom they now have an open partnership and is also a Japanese company), let alone if Microsoft jumped in. Heck, just those two companies (which have both backed Palworld openly already) jumped in on the "F- Nintendo" bandwagon, it would be glorious. All three companies are dogsh*t, but I'll cheer on Darth Vader taking on Sauruman.
... Okay, *that* might have me back MS
Also be aware that because this is in Japan. Japanese law typically disassociates "Patent" from "Court". Under most circumstances a patent is seen as a statement of fact. If you wish to argue the patent you have to go to court over the patent. The court system typically goes under the assumption that the patent is valid and the court case is not to argue the facts of the patent but to see if the facts of the patent are being infringed.
Another great comparison Ive seen is if Ubisoft patented the leap of faith, climbing to high point to unlock more of the map. It was implemented into Breath of the Wild. So if Nintendo wants to go this route, it only opens the door for other companies to sue them for the same thing.
1:58 Nintendo lost the "game genie" lawsuit. Also, remapping to EDSF. Your move!
Was that on Japan though?
@@Eichro Nintendo America
@@Krissco2 So yeah, Nintendo never lost IN JAPANESE COURTS. They had some Ls outside.
The implications of Nintendo winning this are beyond terrifying, like destroying the entire video game industry terrifying.
Japan would get cut off from the international patent treaty before that happened.
Ark have cryo balls
Nintendo's patent could mean no grenades in CoD, no fishing, nothing that means "You throw something that interacts with something in 3D space."
Its techocally an oblique sphereoid, not a sphere
i don't think you can retroactively enforce patents at all even in japan
I've read that there's a one year window for retroactively applying patents. I assume the idea is that if someone steals your idea and beats you to market then you can still file your patent and attempt to prove that in court, but in practice it just makes patent trolling bs like this a lot easier
The WoW example right at the end is such a mic drop. Nintendo is rotten.
Its not even a mic drop by his own logic. Thor said Nintendo goes after palword after its successful. WoW is not successful because of battle pets. If battle pets made palworld money they would go after it.
@@THUNDERSTUDthe revenue from selling one single mount skin in WoW rivals what some devs make on an entire project. You really don't think that the revenue from pets comes close?
@@GentlemanNietzsche No battle pets are not as popular as skins, and even if they were, that single mount skin youre talking about was compared to star craft 2s revenue. And even if battle pets did earn more than sc 2, that would still be small compared to wows general success.
@@THUNDERSTUDWoW isn’t made by a Japanese company, they’d lose trying to sue them.
That was Thor's weakest point IMO. You don't capture battle pets in a 3D open space by aiming capture devices at them like you would in PLA. You capture them like in the old Pokemon games by simply selecting a "throw capture device" option and hoping the catch is successful. There's no running around the creature involved and aiming the device, which from what I understand is what this patent is more so about.
Even compared to the oldschool Pokemon capturing mechanics, WoW's version is still different. In Pokemon you have a catalogue of balls you can choose from with varying effects and catch rates which you can throw at any time you want. In WoW you have a baseline cage you can ONLY throw when the battle pet is below 35% HP. There's no catalogue of cages you can pick between (the cage's catch rate gets increased based on achievements, but there's no player choice in the matter) nor can you throw the cage whenever you want.
I wasn't super interested in playing Palworld, but this suit convinced me to buy a copy
I hope you like crafting survival games.
@@thekingofcookies4877 I know what the game is. I bought the game to support the company. I may play it some time, but it's not top of my backlog
This argument alone could get a case tossed in America
Reminds me how Warner Bros patented (As far as I remember. Don't know if it officially went through) the idea of enemies reacting to you and evolving over time... so y'know... dynamic character development.
In terms of the example in the video, it's so vague that it could be argued to cover so much. Heck, even the idea of throwing a ROCK at an enemy's head to knock them out could fall under the patent.