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An embarrassing failure of the US patent system: Nintendo's latest patents
- _imnothere 1y agoCan people just stop buying Nintendo products so less money for them to do all these legal bullsh*t?
- bell-cot 1y agoSounds like some folks at the USPTO are looking forward to well-paid jobs at Nintendo.
- euroderf 1y agoIt's the spirit of the times.
- basfo 1y agoIt’s strange that you can patent gameplay mechanics. After all, gameplay mechanics are what define a genre. It’s like in literature if someone could patent the idea of a detective investigating a murder. How could the "pokemon-like" genre even exist if you couldn’t create a game that uses “summoning and battling characters”? Even worse, that description alone applies to multiple genres... JRPGs, or even fighting games with multiple characters (something like Marvel vs. Capcom) could fit that description. I can understand intellectual property rights for very specific technical implementations (for example, the raycasting technique used in Wolfenstein 3D) but you shouldn’t be able to patent the concept of the first person shooter itself. That feels more like restricting freedom of expression.
- deaddodo 1y agoThe actual patent goes into specifics about the covered mechanic they are patenting and it focuses much more on the pokeball/swapping mechanics. That being said, if they ever tried to hit anyone with the entirety of that, other than in a case of 1:1 replication of Pokemon, it would be a spurious weapon at best. There's too much prior art + alternative implementations in existence to argue for a unique and inventive mechanic.
- kulahan 1y agoI don't pay much attention to Nintendo news these days, aside from the occasional exciting game I see (my wife is crazy about Fire Emblem, so today's a good day!), but I was under the impression this was kinda specifically aimed at making life hard for Palworld, a game which is (as far as I know - I've not tried it) nearly identical to Pokemon, but with some more mature themes and more a more mature technical environment.
- roblabla 1y agoAs far as gameplay goes, palworld is nothing like Pokemon. Sure, you capture monsters in an open field, but its combat is not turn based and it has a large base building emphasis, for instance. Now, the monster design in pal world is (I think intentionally) very close to Pokemon’s, while also giving them guns, which I suspect is what triggered Nintendo’s action. You can find plenty of Pokemon likes that match its gameplay much closer (cassette beast, tented) that haven’t caused Nintendo’s ire.
- sporedro 1y agoI’m honestly surprised Nintendo didn’t go after the “looks” of the pals. Like you said besides the “balls” or “spheres” used for capture it’s a completely different game. Sure it’s a “similar” genre, but they’re also targeting a different audience altogether. O well guess the lawyers can duke it out in the courts.
- Eddy_Viscosity2 1y agoIt would be a powerful enough weapon if the target of the patent infringement case did not have crazy deep pockets. The costs of defending a winning case can be more than small game developer could hope to afford.
- Atlas667 1y agoYou got it. Copyright is about defending monopolization, not just about creative rights and ensuring attribution. Copyright is an artificial system propping up huge sections of the economy/whole industries. It's internal protectionism at best and hindering progress at worse. Nothing "free market" about it.
- rolph 1y agohow would a summon monster spell compare ? strict interpretation seems to include this prior, and i thought thats not supposed to happen. when a dungeons and dragon magic user, uses summon monster, they may engage with these same described mechanics of summon and battle. [orb of monster summoning would be way out ]
- mmmlinux 1y agoThey don't want a "pokemon-like" genre to exist at all.
- mort96 1y agoWho is "they"? Nintendo doesn't want it, sure. But why should we let Nintendo decide whether or not they want competitors? Why should the patent office not want a pokemon-like genre to exist? It's not surprising that Nintendo wants to patent "summon creatures to fight for you" as a game mechanic, the surprising part is that the patent was granted.
- yepitwas 1y agoYou can't, with board games. I'm not sure why you can with video games. (maybe it's one of those things where you "can't" but actually you can, if you have enough money to keep anyone from successfully challenging it because they can't afford to)
- mort96 1y ago> maybe it's one of those things where you "can't" but actually you can Like how you "can't" patent stuff with prior art but then, somehow, big companies seem to be granted patents for things with plenty of prior art all the time?
- Kranar 1y agoBeing granted a patent does not make it enforceable. Prior art is a defense against patent litigation.
- mort96 1y agoPeople without infinitely deep wallets must assume that all granted patents are enforceable when threatened by Nintendo's legal team.
- dmoy 1y agoSome of it is that "getting a patent" isn't always a high bar, and the real bar is "successfully using a patent in a lawsuit". Patent examiners don't have the time and resources to thoroughly vet every application, so there are a lot of patents granted that are pretty much worthless. In this specific case I don't know. I would have to ask.
- mort96 1y ago> Some of it is that "getting a patent" isn't always a high bar Which is a big fucking problem, to be honest. I would not want to enter a lawsuit with Nintendo to try to convince a judge that the patent I'm clearly violating is invalid. If I was making a game with capture/summon mechanics and got a call from Nintendo, I would probably take capture/summon mechanics out of my game if their lawyers were threatening enough. That's the value in unenforceable patents.
- toast0 1y ago> It’s strange that you can patent gameplay mechanics. After all, gameplay mechanics are what define a genre. I had thought there was case law along the lines of games have no utility and thus can't have utility patents. Although, perhaps that case was too old, and the rules have changed. Assuming that games are subject to utility patents, I don't see why you couldn't hold a patent on a genre defining mechanic... But genere defining mechanics for a Pokemon game probably were in the first games from 1996, and afaik the patent backlog isn't that long that they'd be getting a patent today from an application from back then.
- paradox460 1y agoImagine if id had patented fps
- Fwirt 1y agoThere are a lot of people spreading FUD about these patents, but if you read the actual patent, it’s not like Nintendo now has a patent on all summoning of creatures in video games. The patent is for “you control a character, you throw Pokéball, Pokémon comes out and you control it, and if it comes near another Pokémon it starts a battle”. This is clearly aimed directly at Palworld. Are most software patents stupid and overly broad? Yes. Should this one have been granted? No. Is this going to stifle the industry? Highly unlikely.
- trehalose 1y agoI found the patent extremely difficult to read, but I didn't see anything that describes something so specific as throwing a Pokéball, and in fact, it seemed to me that the patent specifically covers cases where the Pokémon comes out and you don't control it.
- sebastiennight 1y agoYou're correct that the patent (in Claim 1) does not specifically refer to throwing a Pokeball (just to "causing the sub character to appear" based on an input), but it seems to me to still be directly linked to this dynamic. The article itself is quite low-quality (as usual with articles where the title and subheadline are quotes) and I'd go as far as assume it's probably a PR piece placed by another player in the space.
- tracker1 1y agoI'm sorry but the default USPTO position should be to deny process/algorithm/software patents without true innovation. In this case, their own game/show was first released in 1996 in which the patent itself would be invalid from that position, even if they had completely invented the mechanics/idea with no other prior art, their own art is well longer than the term a Patent can/should protect.
- robotnikman 1y agoIt makes me wonder, what's stopping someone from flooding the patent office with thousands of AI generated process/algorithm/software patents, and declaring them free to use for anybody? That's one way I could think of to protect games from being stifled by future patents.
- _aavaa_ 1y agoThe hefty application fee
- jasonhong 1y agoIt costs a non-trivial amount of money to file a patent in the USA
- transcriptase 1y agoAnd even more to enforce it if granted. You can have all the patents in the world but with without being able to file against infringing parties they’re just documents.
- mikestew 1y agoIf what is behind the patent is granted free to use, what’s to enforce? How would I infringe on “free to use for everybody “? I believe OP’s idea is to file the patents defensively to block others from filing stupid patents as in TFA.
- silexia 1y agoPatents themselves are anti-innovator and the entire system should be abolished. The work is what matters, not the idea.
- MattPalmer1086 1y agoIf I come up with a much better way of doing something that is relatively easy to reimplement, there's no great incentive to come up with those ideas then. I'm not suggesting that the current patent system works well, but you are in danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
- Kuyawa 1y agoThe incentive is in delivering first. When the free market saturates and profits are razor thin due to extreme competition, first movers always get the rewards of innovation
- transcriptase 1y agoFor as long as it takes for a bigger fish to implement, which I’m sure would be hastened without any need to consider legality of doing so.
- hex4def6 1y agoCounter: Netscape vs Internet Explorer. Netscape had a year lead, but it's hard to compete when Microsoft decided to bundle IE for 'free'. If profit margins are razor thin, the Apples and Amazons and Microsofts of the world can happily copy an idea and hold their breath far longer than a smaller competitor can.
- carom 1y agoThe incentives are very poor in art, yet artists still create. I don't need people making video games for the incentives, I want the artists.
- why_at 1y agoI wonder if we need something like Anti-SLAPP[1] laws but for patents. If someone sues for infringing on an obviously BS patent there should be a way for the defendant to quickly resolve the case and recover any costs they incurred from the plaintiff. I'm not a lawyer or anything though so idk how or even if this would work. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation#Anti-SLAPP_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_publ...
- inChargeOfIT 1y agoFrom the abstract, it sure sounds like any electronic checkers or chess game would fall under this patent. If so, I'm sure there is plenty of prior art to invalidate their claim.
- tiotempestade 1y agoCan’t we just let America drown in its marooning stupidity?
- kjkjadksj 1y agoI don't understand how you can patent a concept that is already decades old without patent protection.
- knollimar 1y agoCan someone clarify the patent? Most discourse I've seen outside this website regarding this focuses on parts only listed in non-limited examples (like ball throwing). I don't think that's relevant at all here (except claim 10). The main text from what I understand is the claims in sections 37 to 41. Claim 1 is what I'm understanding the be the main claim, which can be summarized as summons that can either do manual combat or automatically battle after following a player around/being directed. The other claims are to be taken individually, correct? If not, claim 10 (requiring attack of sub character and option for capture) would disqualify most non-capture games and would likely make this a non-issue, but if just the first claim needs to stand then this would be really broad (and from what I understand, prior art in that space would be easy to point to).