Pocketpair Responds to Nintendo and The Pokemon Company Lawsuit - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 03 October 2024 / 5,318 Views
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company recently announced it has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. Nintendo in its statement did not specify which patents Palworld infringes on.
Pocketpair has now issued a response to the lawsuit saying they will fight back "to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas."
Read the full statement from Pocketpair below:
Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement.
We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.
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.
Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo. Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world. Palworld was a surprise success this year, both for gamers and for us. We were blown away by the amazing response to the game and have been working hard to make it even better for our fans. We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.
It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit. However, we will do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.
We apologize to our fans and supporters for any worry or discomfort that this news has caused.
As always, thank you for your continued support of Palworld and Pocketpair.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can contact the author on Twitter @TrunksWD.
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The fact that this is a patent lawsuit rather than copyright lawsuit seems odd to me. They may have had a case if they were going after the creature designs, as alot of them look like they started as Pokemon, then were fed into an AI program designed to make them look just different enough to skirt around the laws. But this is a patent lawsuit, it suggests Nintendo is trying to claim they have patented either monster catching or monster vs monster RPG fighting mechanics. That sets a dangerous precedent if the courts allow Nintendo to get away with patenting gameplay systems, gameplay design should be free for anyone to copy, locking it down stifles game development.
I can't imagine their case relies solely on the idea that Pokémon originated and is the only rightful owner of monster catching or monster v monster RPG fighting mechanics. If it did, The Pokémon Company would have sued tens of successful "Pokémon-clones" released in the past 30 or so years, but they didn't. Instead, it must be related to something exclusive to Palworld, such as, I would imagine, creature design.
Patent and copyright law (and also trademark) are all intellectual property, but cover very different things. Copyright law covers directly an artistic creation and only that. So until recently (copyright started to expire) you weren't allowed to draw (and sell) Mickey Mouse, but you were very much allowed to draw a mouse. That's why Palworld didn't infringe on the copyright of Pokemon, as the designs are not the same, not copied (hence copyright).
Patents restrict even similar things, not only direct copies. But they are much more limited for what they can be applied. They are applied to inventions. So no designs, but instead often methods of doing things or machines or something like this. The game industry for instance had a patent on playing a simple game in a loading screen of a game, which is why nobody did that until the patent expired recently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright
filing lawsuits over patenting disputes is not even remotely unprecedented in the game industry lol. I may not be super informed, but this “precedent” had been broken decades ago.
Yeah, there was a patent on loading screen games and naturally the infamous Nemesis system patent.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/loading-screen-game-patent-finally-expires
https://www.gamesradar.com/video-game-patents-that-might-surprise-you/
That's what I mean, I'm hoping this will end up being a landmark decision against gameplay system patents, serving as a framework for legal challenges against existing patents. Something like the nemesis system should never have been allowed to be patented, it was one of the biggest NPC innovations of this past generation, but aside from Shadow of Mordor, Shadow of War, and the upcoming Wonder Woman game all from WB's Monolith, the only developer who has even tried to do a similar system was Ubisoft with AC Odyssey, because most devs are too scared to attempt a similar system for fear of a lawsuit from WB.
If it's a gameplay patent, I hope they lose. Gameplay shouldn't be patentable IMO.
It is possible that they go a different way if their argument is that the designs of the Pokemon themselves are patentable. Which would also be a weird precedent, but a more understandable one given the advent of AI. I do think AI necessitates stronger protections of IP and whatnot.
But I also know very little about patent law.
The precedent for software patents dates to 1962. And for game mechanics, it vastly predates videogames, back to 1904.
With your suggestion it's worth remembering that the original concept of Pokemon was copied entirely from Ultraseven's capsule monsters. they were even originally going to be called capsule monsters. Pokemon has always had ajn inspiration from another source that is incredibly obvious to japanese audiences.
That's interesting. Cuz like its very obvious some of the creatures are nearly identical to Pokemon. I would totally side with Nintendo in that case, cuz the Palworld devs could have easily just made their creatures more different than pokemon and the game would have been the same - pokemon with guns without being ripped-off pokemon with guns. But if it is for some specific mechanic that'd be pretty dumb because game mechanics are used widely and should never be restricted.
I heard rumours, and remember this is just a rumour, that the patents in question cover:
- mounting/unmounting a flying mount
- targeting an object to toss at a monster in 3D world
- releasing catched creatures
OK, I found one document which seems to cover the object tossing at a monster (remember, this is all rumour status):
https://patents.google.com/patent/JP7545191B1/en?assignee=nintendo&after=priority:20240430
This is only applied to in Japan and the document is in Japanese, Google provides a translation, but that may be flawed. Also to note: Nintendo applied for this patent this year and got it granted only weeks ago.To cite from the translation:
Conventionally, there are game programs in which a player character throws a ball at a character in a virtual space, capturing the character and setting it in the player character's possession (for example, see Non-Patent Document 1).
...
However, in the game program disclosed in the above-mentioned non-patent document 1, the ball can only be thrown to capture characters during battle, and the ball cannot be thrown on the field.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a game program, a game system, a game device, and a game processing method that enable a player character to perform various types of actions on a field in a virtual space.
...
One configuration example of the game program of the present invention causes a computer of an information processing device to switch at least between a first mode and a second mode based on a first operation input, and in the first mode, causes the computer to determine an aiming direction in a virtual space based on a second operation input, and causes the player character to fire an item that affects a field character placed on a field in the virtual space in the aiming direction based on a third operation input, and when the item is fired at a location where the field character is placed, gives an effect associated with the item to the field character, and in the second mode, causes the computer to determine an aiming direction based on the second operation input, and causes the player character to fire a combat character that will engage in combat in the aiming direction based on the third operation input, and when the combat character is fired at a location where the field character is placed, starts a battle on the field between the field character and the combat character.
Don't screw with Big N. You screw with Big N, you get the Big D.
