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Palworld Will "March On" Amid Nintendo Lawsuit

Funnily, Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Palworld have both sold about 15 million copies each, except the former released in 2022 in contrast to the latter which released early this year. Palworld is also still early access on Steam, there might be a sales spike when they release v.1.00.

Blanchimont wrote:

Funnily, Pokémon Legends: Arceus and Palworld have both sold about 15 million copies each, except the former released in 2022 in contrast to the latter which released early this year. Palworld is also still early access on Steam, there might be a sales spike when they release v.1.00.

There's almost never a spike when an early access launches into 1.0. It's usually barely even noticed.

it was never a question if you know how patent infringements work.

worst case they would pay to use it or re-work w/e patent was issue and life carries on.

also I do see it as more ark than pokemon as you dont need to use the pals..you can go 100% only guns and melee while using pal mount just to soak damage taken.

Firefly251 wrote:

it was never a question if you know how patent infringements work. worst case they would pay to use it or re-work w/e patent was issue and life carries on. also I do see it as more ark than pokemon as you dont need to use the pals..you can go 100% only guns and melee while using pal mount just to soak damage taken.

That assumes Nintendo will let them license the tech

nintendo does not nor should it have the right to own a game mechanic that many games had it before their own pokemon come to be.

animaters wrote:

nintendo does not nor should it have the right to own a game mechanic that many games had it before their own pokemon come to be.

Whether you feel like gameplay mechanic patents should exist or not, Nintendo does own a patent on aiming and throwing an object at a creature on a field to capture it, and Nintendo's Japan branch has never lost a lawsuit they've initiated. The only real question here is how much Pocketpair will be paying Nintendo.

nintendo does not nor should it have the right to own a game mechanic that many games had it before their own pokemon come to be.

i propose atlus patent troll nintendo for stealing their game mechanic for taming monsters and making them your own summonable monsters

Despite Nintendo's last few years on the intellectual property warpath, IP lawyer and videogame patent expert Kirk Sigmon says its success in its Palworld lawsuit is far from guaranteed. In fact, Sigmon says that in suing Pocketpair, Nintendo risks losing its patent entirely.

In an interview with PC Gamer covering videogame patents and the Palworld lawsuit, Sigmon said that drafting a patent filing is a delicate balancing act, especially when it's a patent on a videogame design concept.

"Your job, to some degree, is to weave the delicate balance between going overly narrow —allowing everyone to freely knock off your idea because you've described it so narrowly— and going too broad," Sigmon said. "If you're too broad, then you've given them a pathway to make the patent go away, because you've given them an opportunity to prove that it was already in existence."

By Sigmon's estimation, some of the claims made by the patents widely assumed to form the basis of Nintendo's lawsuit skew too broad. "I mean, this part [of Nintendo's patent] is easy as hell to find: 'Control a player character in a virtual space based on operation input.' That alone I could throw any variety of videogame at," Sigmon said.

By basing a patent lawsuit on potentially overbroad claims, Sigmon explained, Nintendo's playing with fire. Both US and Japanese patent law have mechanisms for invalidating patents leveled against you. If Pocketpair is able to prove that the claims made by Nintendo's patents are demonstrated in prior art —meaning similar design elements had already existed in other games— then Nintendo wouldn't just lose its lawsuit. It could lose its patent entirely.

"Because this is drafted fairly broadly, even in Japanese, you can get clever about what games you're looking at as prior art, what references you're looking at," Sigmon said. "You'd be surprised how often you can make those arguments. They've exposed themselves in a big way."