this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
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Palworld maker vows to fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers (www.eurogamer.net)
submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 178 points 3 months ago (3 children)

It's not even copyright, they're suing for using things they patented, but their patents are extremely general. I kid you not, they have a patent for MOUNTING CREATURES, something hundreds of games have done.

Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target objects is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground player character automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.

I'm no lawyer so I can't tell you how well this would hold up in court but it's ridiculous. See more: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/the-pokemon-company

[–] [email protected] 98 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

I am positive prior art could be claimed for most if not all of those. Square Enix could cry afoul of the "mounting creatures" one as well as I'm sure many, many other earlier games on a plethora of platforms.

You could mount and ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy 2, i.e. the real "2," the JDM only one on Famicom, which was released in 1988. The aforementioned patent was only filed on Nintendo's part in 2024.

They can, to use a technical legal term, get fucked.

[–] [email protected] 53 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Yes but it’s fucking expensive to invalidate a patent. Possibly in the millions of dollars. That’s how patent trolls succeed - it’s far cheaper to own a bad patent than to fight one.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Well it's a good thing Palworld was a huge sales success.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 3 months ago

And now more free advertising from the streisand effect

[–] [email protected] 19 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Blizzard should be paying attention to this, as it perfectly describes their flying mounts.

I really hope Nintendo just picked a fight with Blizzard/Microsoft lol

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Bullies tend to pick victims who can't fight back too effectively, so I doubt they'd go after Microsoft.

All the big tech companies have a bunch of vague patents than in a just world would never exist, and they seldom go after each other, because they know then they'll be hit with a counter-suit alleging they violate multiple patents too, and in the end everyone except the lawyers will be worse off. It's sort of like mutually assured destruction. They don't generally preemptively invalidate each other's patents, so if Microsoft is not a party to the suit, they'll likely stay out of it entirely.

However, newer and smaller companies are less likely to be able to counter-sue as effectively, so if they pose a threat of taking revenue from the big companies (e.g. by launching on competitor platforms only), they are ripe targets for patent-based harassment.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 months ago (1 children)

While Microsoft is not a target right now, if that patent for ground-flying mounts is used (which I doubt it will, given it's too recent and widely used by older games), Palworld can just point at World of Warcraft Burning Crusade as prior art and it suddenly becomes MS vs Nintendo.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Yep, and it would be hilarious to watch Nintendo get smacked down.

[–] [email protected] 37 points 3 months ago (4 children)

It's a little more specific, I think the patent is about:

  • mounting either an air or ground mount
  • when riding the air mount, going close to the ground transforms it into the ground mount and you keep riding it

But that's still something multiple games have done in some way I think.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

They better sue Microsoft over WoW, then, their IP did that in 2007.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

I think Joust did this first. Difference might be that the player is permanently mounted all the time.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Drakengard comes to mind

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Holy shit I forgot about Drakengard. That's the one with the giant sky babies right?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Ya!!! The prequel to nier ❤️

[–] [email protected] 8 points 3 months ago

So, just like FFXIV?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 3 months ago (2 children)

IANAL - but I've worked for Big Company and have gone through the patent process a few times. A patent isn't what's written in the supporting text and abstract. It's only the exact thing written out in the claims.

First claim from the patent the abstract is from:

  1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a game program causing a computer of an information processing apparatus to provide execution comprising:

    controlling a player character in a virtual space based on a first operation input;

    in association with selecting, based on a selection operation, a boarding object that the player character can board and providing a boarding instruction, causing the player character to board the boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move, wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;

    in association with providing a second operation input when the player character is in the air, causing the player character to board an air boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move in the air; and

    while the player character is aboard the air boarding object, moving the player character, aboard the air boarding object, in the air based on a third operation input.

Exactly everything described above must be done in that exact same way for there to be an infringement.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 3 months ago (1 children)

That seems a bit more easy to get around. It is still crazy to think that you have to check your whole game design against that many patents 😅

[–] [email protected] 14 points 3 months ago (2 children)

it's stupid. I'm convinced that people who oversee software patents don't even know what's a computer.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 3 months ago

Of course they do! It's those weird white boxes that nerdy nerds nerd about with numbers and shit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 months ago

More than likely.
And then you have people like Albert Einstein that worked in the patent office.
(Obviously not software)

[–] TowardsTheFuture 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Which sounds like mount selection based on if onland==True: landmountlist, else: airmountlist. ??? Can you really patent “I used an if statement to change what the mount button does based on a condition”

Boy, better fucking patent that fucking pure genius there’s no way anyone could program that without having copied us.

Like I fucking hope I misread that.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 months ago

All of the statements in the claim need to be fulfilled - so while that if looks correct it's only a very small part of the actions described. Example:

in association with selecting, based on a selection operation,[...], wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;