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Nintendo

Palworld Developer Has No Idea Why Nintendo's Suing Over Its Pokemon-like Game 39

Posted by msmash from the tell-me-why dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Pocketpair has responded to the lawsuit filed against it by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. The studio that developed Palworld, the game at the heart of the suit, issued a statement early this morning saying it doesn't know what patents it violated. "At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details," the statement read.

According to Nintendo's press release, the reason for the lawsuit has to do with Pocketpair allegedly infringing on multiple as yet undisclosed patents. The details of the lawsuit have not yet been made public, so we do not yet know which patents, and according to Pocketpair's statement, it doesn't know, either.

Palworld Developer Has No Idea Why Nintendo's Suing Over Its Pokemon-like Game More | Reply

Palworld Developer Has No Idea Why Nintendo's Suing Over Its Pokemon-like Game

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  • I remember when Slashdot was against them. And when they were against huge corporations using them to crush the small indies.

    • I remember when Slashdot was against them. And when they were against huge corporations using them to crush the small indies.

      Lets back up a step. I remember when accusers felt actually responsible for telling the “violator” what they actually did wrong.

      Right now this looks far more like a huge corporation abusing rumor and clickbait bullshit to destroy a small company. They need to prove otherwise or knock that cheesy shit off.

      • I remember talking to the lead developer of Palworld at a Satanic orgy when he told me "Our goal is to make a game just like Pokemon but for adults."

      • Lets back up a step. I remember when accusers felt actually responsible for telling the “violator” what they actually did wrong.

        Exactly: they should first send a "letter before action" or a "Cease and desist" [wikipedia.org] which gives the alleged violator an opportunity to change what they are doing and avoid legal action.

        • Those are the things that you do, if you have a solid case. Otherwise, you just sue and hope that you can bankrupt your smaller competitor before they can defend themselves in court.

          • Those are the things that you do, if you have a solid case. Otherwise, you just sue and hope that you can bankrupt your smaller competitor before they can defend themselves in court.

            Thats a corrupt tactic. Not one based on actual infringements. Might as well call the big players dictators and be honest about it.

        • they should first send a "letter before action" or a "Cease and desist" [wikipedia.org]

          This seems to be a concept in USA law. But both companies (Nintendo, Pocketpair) are in Japan.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by keltor ( 99721 ) *
            Pointless to explain, but just in case anyone bothers to read down here, Japanese law in these cases are fairly different from the USA. Copyright, Patents, and the like have some different rules. The biggest factor is Japan has game patents.

    • It is about designs (first line of the previous slashdot article, linked in the summary). Registered designs are not patents, but some people call them "design patents"*. This lawsuit is something Disney would do. You can't just make a lookalike of famous characters, sell 2 million copies in 24 hours, and hope nobody notices.

      * by extension because they're also a sort of a visible (publicly-available) document providing legal protection; which is what the word "patent" (visible, obvious) originally referred

      • From my understanding, and I merely skimmed through articles about this, it seems that they aren't suing about the artistic design patterns, so much as the gameplay ones.
        There are only so many ways you can design a "fire dog" or "electric rat" before infringing on pokemon territory. Of course the question would be "Why are you designing electric rats and fire dogs when those are pretty much iconic to pokemon", but that's a different question.
        From what I saw, though, it seems that Nintendo is suing because t

        • Probably because electric rats and fire dogs were taken from historical cultural stuff. For example, "Fire Dogs" and "Hell Hounds".

        • > Whether this has ground to stand on remains to be seen.

          Huh? This is a no brainer. It was ruled back in the 1980s [americanbar.org] that you couldn't protect the rules of game.

          It will be VERY interesting to see Nintendo try to weasel on how their IP is being infringed.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by Mirddes ( 798147 )

            they're japanese not american.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by keltor ( 99721 ) *
            In Japan game design patents are allowed and indeed have been enforced several times in the history of games.

            There's actually a few general game designs you simply don't see due to this. (There are also lots of gentlemen's agreements as well in Japan.)

        • This has actually come up. The idea of catching monsters into small objects long predates Pokemon. You can't trademark/patent gameplay.

          Palworld apparently had lawyers go over everything before publishing. They may come close on some things, but at least under Japanese law, they should have been good according to said Lawyers.

          So not really knowing WHY Nintendo is suing makes some sense. While it being in Japan changes some things, if Nintendo doesn't cough up specifics rather quickly, Pocketpair will win

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by unrtst ( 777550 )

          There are only so many ways you can design a "fire dog" or "electric rat" before infringing on pokemon territory.

          Last time I saw this on /., an article had some comparisons of the 3d models. This isn't just "fire dog". They're often damn near the same model, same proportions, details copied verbatim, etc.. Here's a couple of the google hits about it:
          https://www.ign.com/articles/p... [ign.com]
          https://www.videogameschronicl... [videogameschronicle.com]

          But I don't have a firedog in this fight or a ponyta in this race.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by keltor ( 99721 ) *
            Unless they straight up lifted them, they are not enforceable in Japan.

            It's been show in other places after those articles came out that the models are not stolen.

            I other fun news, a bunch of Gen 1 and Gen 2 pokemon are straight up lifted out of Dragon Quest and the owners of Dragon Quest are not Nintendo

        • If you think the gameplay is that special, let me introduce you Nexomon [steampowered.com]

      • That would be copyright, or potentially trademarks, and not design patents. It's easy to see all the design patents that Nintendo has (at least US ones) - https://patents.google.com/?q=... [google.com]. They are mainly for the physical design of objects, like chargers, or cables, etc. Nintendo has some for the design of a charger that looks like a Pokeball, etc.

        IANAL, but I would expect Nintendo would only be able to claim infringement based on trademark or copyright, not patents. I'll be interested to see what they cla

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by keltor ( 99721 ) *
          Cool thing is that this is all about Japanese patent law between Japanese companies.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        "Patent" as a noun comes from "letters patent", or "litterae patentes," (open letters) which were documents issued by monarchs conferring a right or license or similar.

        Design patents, copyrights, letters of marque, the deed to your house and the registration for your car are arguably "patents" and some of them might well be called that in the local legal lingo.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by RedK ( 112790 )

        > It is about designs (first line of the previous slashdot article, linked in the summary).

        Since the patent in questions have not yet been revealed, this is not quite yet clear cut. People have linked to this new utility patent granted in August 2024 to Nintendo as more probably the "patent" being infringing :

        https://patents.justia.com/pat... [justia.com]

        This is obviously not a "design" but an actual game mechanic. It would be like Capcom patenting the Hadouken and suing Midway for Liu Kang's fire ball.

        Plus as some

      • That isn't what the filings are saying. They are refering to gameplay patent, a thing that exists in japan but not in the west.

    • > I remember when Slashdot was against them. And when they were against huge corporations using them to crush the small indies.

      Finally, hard hitting facts.

  • It's entirely possible that Nintendo and the Pokemon Company are simply engaging in advanced douchebaggery. Remember Amazon's "one click" patent?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by leonbev ( 111395 )

      I'm not sure if you can really patent the idea of "A game where you capture pets in traps that look like a ball and train them", because that's about where the similarities between Palworld and Pokemon end.

      Honestly, the game felt more like they were borrowing game play elements from World Of Warcraft (Like riding/flying mounts, crafting weapons, boss battles and dungeon raids) to me when I tried it.

      • Nintendo patented the gameplay loop surrounding the capturing and training. A player issues a command to attempt capture via. a ball object, this capture will fail or succeed based on a combination of your stats, the monster stats, the ball stats. If it succeeds, this next flowchart sequence does this thing... and so on. So when people try to bring up other examples of "capture and train" style gameplay, it should be noted that what Nintendo patented is specifically "The Pokemon Style" of that as opposed to

        • Either you're being factual or this is brilliant fiction writing.

          I do hope it's fiction or else "what the clownworld hell?"

          • I'm being vague because nobody really knows what they are being sued over. And also because I wouldn't pretend to understand the nuance of understanding a patent application.

            The speculation is it's this: JP-2023-092953 [inpit.go.jp] which if you view the PDF version you'll see some diagrams at the front and back that denote the action of throwing a pokeball in the field to initiate a capture or battle and such. This came about after Arceus which changed up the formula of a regular Pokemon game into a semi-open world thin

  • In other words... (Score:3)

    by Richard_at_work ( 517087 ) on Thursday September 19, 2024 @07:50PM (#64801265)

    Palworld developer has shocked Pikachu face...

  • How do you file a lawsuit without saying what it's about?

  • We just don't know what specific justification they want to try their luck with. If Nintendo could sue them for leaving the toilet seat up it would be that.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dohzer ( 867770 )

      Surely Nintendo should be paying them for the effort it took to lift the toilet seat. Lowering it is the easy part.

  • There's no idea why N is doing it on paper, but we all know the real reason is that someone in N is throwing a hissy fit that people are spending money and it's not on THEIR games. If N could sue Bungie and Sega to shut them down, they would. That's what a legal department does with it's spare time.

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