Nintendo was granted a patent last week which covers the action of summoning another character and making them battle on the player’s behalf.

Specifically, the patent describes a situation where:

A console or other system is being used to run a video game from storage
The player controls a character in a “virtual space”
The player can perform an input command to make a “sub character” appear (i.e. summon another character)

If there’s an enemy where the sub character appears, the player can control a battle between the sub character and the enemy
If there’s no enemy where the sub character appears, the sub character will automatically move around

The player can move the sub character to a different location on the field, and if an enemy is there they can control a battle between the sub character and the enemy

However, whereas trademark law says that a company could lose its trademark if it doesn’t challenge any infringements, this isn’t the case with patents. While Nintendo has patented this mechanic, it can choose not to pursue any other company that decides to use it, and only do so when it feels its own IP is being threatened

This was the case with Palworld, which has seen accusations of plagiarising from the Pokémon games ever since its release in early 2024.

we live in the stupidest cyberpunk dystopia

^ this

couldn't they have just... trademarked the models they used, instead of patenting some weird goofball shit,

but this will allow them to bring down the hammer on any monster collector they deem to be stepping too closely to their turf

b... blinks...

i hate being a corpo defender but they did in fact only patent their specific game play for arceus/scarlet violet/ZA

it's not as broad as folks are saying lol

https://ppubs.uspto.gov/... here's the actual patent if folks wanna look it over

like i still think it's stupid but they are only patenting the specific way their models move attack and summon, pokeball (item) included

it's just very tiring seeing this sensationalized, just like the ride pokemon thing that was very specifically detailed to arceus as well

i've seen folks hoping for a boycott and its like. plz there are far more important things to be worried about than this.

going out of their way to patent these things seem silly but maybe they're just dickwaving so people will think it's Copyrighted when it's not.

yea it's more so that

aaahh

WHICH IS STILL VERY SCUMMY IMO

but also not anything new in the big corpo world lol

like you really do just have to look at digimon time stranger to be like. yeah lmao they don't give that much of a shit.

YEAH LIKE, NOTHING ABOUT THIS IS NEW

it's a very kneejerk kind of reaction, which might very well be the intent

i don't think nintendo's given much a shit at all about pokemon knock offs until palworld got too bold lol

it's not, like, wb games copyrighting the nemesis system level of scummy.

yeah lmao

but yeah the clickbait titles and not giving all the info and then people going 'WHY ARE YOU A SIMP FOR NINTENDO' has been so tiring lakdfjsdfk its like plz research

*no one here is being accused of that but i had to mute some other plurks and quietly unfollow some blue sky folks yelling

yeah you're not gonna get indepth discussion about documentation this dense good lord

sorry to hear about that

YEAH it's just the nature of the internet

and also nintendo has been very questionable lately so can't blame folks for chomping at the bit

capitalism is a fuck right now sooo bad

it's baaaad and even if Nintendo does this for reasonable.... reasons people are gonna rubberneck at them for going out of their way to institute patent language for [checks notes]

summoning a secondary character that can move through the space and attack other secondary characters upon command

which, funnily enough, is not something palworld actually lets you do

It’s more that this is a common practice among devs, especially Japanese devs, to serve as guideposts for other devs to avoid doing things specifically the way they did. It’s less dickwaving and more a tool to signpost things to avoid to keep from accidentally plagiarize each other

The way I’ve had this explained to me is that it ensures creativity rather than restrict it

Oh, that's kind of interesting, actually

Pocket Pair specifically ripped off GF’s riding and capture mechanics to the letter in addition to plagiarizing designs. They then basically said “I like stealing. We’re going to keep making games where we steal.” in so many words. And yet people act like they’re the victims.

Honestly I feel like all the monster taming games that preceded/were contemporaneous to/came after pokemon do their best to do their own thing.

Even the ones that feel, uh, Directly Inspired like perhaps Robopon have pretty different mechanics

I would hope it inspires creativity, yeah

I'm wary about the palworld situation because people a lot smarter than me have looked more indepth at it and deemed that the designs can be plagiarized if not just being.... bad designs

When GF patented their capture mechanics, they didn’t just patent the idea of a creature going into a capture device, they patented the idea of the spherical device and the rng values and the capture rates and so on and so forth. But news media and fandom made it out like Ninty was trying to lay claim to the whole idea of capturing monsters

lightdrizzel: well, it’s a gray area and PalWorld successfully skirted the design issue from a legal standpoint. But otherwise they clearly did plagiarize design aspects. Anyone with eyes can tell. That just unfortunately doesn’t hold up in court. So Nintendo is pursuing the stuff they can get them for

oh absolutely

Either way through this I’ve realized - the gameplay patents Pocket Pair are getting sued over are more than just excuses to get them over the designs. They ARE stuff Nintendo legitimately cares about, and it’s GOOD they’re taking legal action, because not only does it damage Nintendo from a business standpoint, it violates a code of etiquette that’s useful-

the weird thing about game patents is that sometimes they're done to protect other game studios from more malicious parties patenting them???

e.g. non game companies

I saw a video going into this, but basically a lot of the time the patent isn't really enforced

- to the industry at large. If they misuse it with impunity, the door is open suddenly for everyone else to. More than Nintendo is on the line here; the development methods of many, many devs is on the line here

granted, this is nintendo, which is very litigious.

but I think there as even a time where interactive loading screens were patented???

(not by nintendo, but)

Dorked: that’s also true. And yes they are litigious. But you have to look at each case on its own, I think

Yeah this is all to say that I have [vague hand wobble] faith in nintendo as they tend to do things case-by-case and keep to themselves

Yeah

The pocketpair case is all the more complicated due to Sony's involvement

Moon Channel has some interesting videos on that

I’d say Sony was very irresponsible forming a partnership with them

Sony being irresponsible with their business decisions? nooo

huh the patent link isn't working

"too many requests", crazy

oop, try again

that works thanks

Yeah the problem is that this shit shouldn’t be patentable, Nintendo is responding to the incentives that the fucked up patent system is presenting

Welp, guess this is it for Yugioh folks—

on the one hand i don't trust nintendo as far as i could spit

on the other hand, if i'm spitting in the first place, it's on pocket pair

so.

rip each others dicks off.gif

OddEyes: woulda thought Ninty had sights trained on YGO anyway, they both have mascots named Kuribo (disclaimer this is deeply unserious)