Palworld vs Pokémon lawsuit possible issues legally for ff14

So I know it sounds wierd and all but getting into the details I’m sure it make more sense.

So one of the patents that Nintendo made so they could sue palworld was basically the system to select a mount from a menu that the player can ride on the ground and then could transfer to flying in the air or land from the air. Which largely speaking is basically the same as mount system in pretty much any video game 60% of the function if there’s no flying which begs the question could we be losing our mount system should Nintendo win to avoid lawsuits until they rework it to avoid a lawsuit?

The legal complexities at play here are a real headache. Whilst I have no idea for sure (this is a Japanese patent lawsuit between two Japanese companies), I would assume that in order for Nintendo to challenge Patent infringement the mount system within a game would need to either be functionally the same as/very similar to, or borrow elements from, Nintendo's system for Nintendo to have a case.
But again - I'm only assuming.

Although I will say that IF a sense of paranoia did spread it would impact far more than just FFXIV.

next time nintendo should patten games so they can have full control

If Pokémon could lay claim over such a generic concept, then Final Fantasy can probably go after them for using potions to restore HP and ethers to restore MP-equivalent.

These kinds of lawsuits happen all the time in gaming - gaming companies and developers sue each other for one using another's ideas, mechanics or technology, and really, this is probably going to be like the others - each company's legal team settles out of court by paying damages and then royalities.

This whole thing is about money not whether a game used a certain mechanic that a certain company 'created' or not, especially a mechanic that has been used for years by various developers without issue.

Nintendo only attack people that try to f*ck with them, so SE has nothing to fear. Most of the industry use some of their patent for free (the D-pad is patented by Nintendo, yet everyone use it for free), as much in term of hardware than software. Their mentality is that it's something the industry need. But when someone tries to f*ck with them, they use them as dissuasion method.

People like to paint this situation as Nintendo fearing for their licence and thus trying to kill the game that did what people want pokemon to be, but palworld looks more like Ark : Survival Evolve than Pokemon, and Pocket Pair (the studio behind palworld) is known to be a company with an history of shady marketting plans, games being sold in alpha/beta and never getting an official release, etc.

If I had to guess, I would rather think Nintendo found some of their assets in the game, and they want to kill the fact Pocket Pair use a narrative that paint them as the bad guy of the story. Last Pokemon showed them they can release basically the same game again and again, and release it bugged as hell and still be the best sold pokemon game ever... Nintendo probably don't care about Palworld, Nintendo don't like being painted like the bad guy by a shady company that use that narrative as a commercial argument.

Nintendo only cares when it's a passionate fan project, a threat to a new project, or pal world because the devs dared to step up and actually make a good Pokemon game.

I know one thing - I detest the fact that Nintendo may well have created a new patent after Palworld came out, paid to rush the patent through the approval process, and are now suing Palworld for RETROACTIVELY violating a patent they created for no other reason than to ruin Palworld. Sorry, but if it is true this is scummy as hell.

If it is correct, so far as I am concerned Nintendo should be made to pay Palworld for exploitive misuse of the patent system; it sets a terrible precedent for corporations being able to sue small businesses over retroactively created patents.

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Originally Posted by Carin-Eri

I know one thing - I detest the fact that Nintendo may well have created a new patent after Palworld came out, paid to rush the patent through the approval process, and are now suing Palworld for RETROACTIVELY violating a patent they created for no other reason than to ruin Palworld. Sorry, but if it is true this is scummy as hell.

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that is what I have heard as well (this being one of the patents in question), then yes, they were created after Palworlds release, which should become invalid given the facts. IANAL though.

Making a patent for something that already exists is redundant. Should be easy to get thrown out of court.

A lot of tech companies made patents for things that existed before they existed themselves, such as polls (believe it or not). It's not been a practical issue, because people continue making polls and "violating" their patent, but I don't see how it could possibly hold up when it definitely wasn't their invention.

Most people forget about Craftopia that Pocket Pair also put out which came out before Nintendo filed for certain patents. Prior art.

Prior art exists before anything Nintendo put out for mounts. Look to Ultima 1.

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Originally Posted by ovIm

that is what I have heard as well (this being one of the patents in question), then yes, they were created after Palworlds release, which should become invalid given the facts. IANAL though.

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Unfortunately, from my understanding of patents is that a patent owner can sue for infringement if someone uses their patented invention without permission, even if that patent was created after the product was finished. I.E. Nintendo making the patent after Palworld was released is still, for some reason, legal and applicable. I think it's only not applicable if the patent is still pending.

A defense case for it to be invalid is for patent language to not be precise enough (I.E., if it's too broad in its wording) or if the patented technology existed before the patentee's filing (which when it comes to software is a can of worms).

From what I understandf, Japan's legal system for patents works in a way that they're granted to whoever patents something first rather than whoever makes the thing first... So from that point, Nintendo's absolute bullshit patent would be valid despite these things having existed for many many years prior...

But it's going to have to be seen if any court in Japan would allow for such a broad concept to be patented.

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Originally Posted by ryutakayama

So one of the patents that Nintendo made so they could sue palworld was basically the system to select a mount from a menu that the player can ride on the ground and then could transfer to flying in the air or land from the air. Which largely speaking is basically the same as mount system in pretty much any video game 60% of the function if there’s no flying which begs the question could we be losing our mount system should Nintendo win to avoid lawsuits until they rework it to avoid a lawsuit?

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A patent will become invalid if something exists before the patent was filed. It is called "prior art". And the patent, which Nintendo uses against Palworld could also become invalid because of that. There is a game named "Craftopia", which has very similar mechanics to the Nintento patent.


Cheers

Unfortunately, it appears we've entered the dark age of gaming patents and legal profit, where gaming companies race with each other to register their patents. The profit they've made from selling games and innovation no longer stands as a pillar to profitability, but rather suing others for legal profit in place of sales.

I hope some legal changes and regulations happen to prevent this farce from getting worse.

I hope for the sake of sanity that Palworld wins this but really all patents should have limited exclusivity, I understand keeping them as an "I invented this thing/way of doing things and you can't claim it" after the exclusivity period which I would set at five to ten years, but beyond a limited lifespan exclusivity serves only to hold back technological development.

As for Nintendo being made to seem like the bad guy by a shady company, maybe Nintendo should stop competing with EA to be the most hated company on Earth, given how generic the patents in question are the most just outcome is for the whole case to be laughed out of court.

Nintendo only cares when you try to enter their exclusive bubble of 'casual/family games'.

If you're outside of the bubble, you pretty much have nothing to fear. WoW has had fake Pokemon for over a decade and as far as I know never got any problems.

Stick your finger in the bubble, though, like so many fan game devs have been known to do, and you're very likely getting it bitten off.

Pocket Pair thought they could hide from the beast inside the bubble. They're probably going to be eaten alive.

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Originally Posted by CNitsah

Nintendo only attack people that try to f*ck with them

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Nah, other way around. Nintendo f*cks with smaller game developers to scare them away from creating games that might possibly show creativity or advancements in the gaming industry by using such vague-arse patents to sue with. Smaller developers don't have the funds to defend themselves against a giant multi-billion dollar company, and will have to cave-in on the lawsuit.

Why allow competition to exist that will force you to develop better games when you can rehash the same game over and over again to make money?

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

If you're outside of the bubble, you pretty much have nothing to fear. WoW has had fake Pokemon for over a decade and as far as I know never got any problems.

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probably the most simple answer : blizzard being a US company so not the same law are applied and blizzard being blizzard (so having quite the staff of lawyer etc)

I don't know much about copyright practices in the gaming industry so this may be a silly question but how can Nintendo have such a monopoly on the "collect and train creatures for battle" idea which to me feels more like a general/broader gameplay concept?

Imo that's as if someone were to copyright rpgs (leveling your character, having stats, different abilities, skill trees, armour), turn-based (FF-style) rpgs in particular, tekken-esque fighting games etc. ... And then there is the whole genre of soulslike with the distinct purpose of recreating the key elements of FromSoftware games with their own spin.
Also didn't Genshin Impact heavily reference certain Legend of Zelda BoTW features but never got into any trouble (which I think is good) despite Zelda being Nintendo?

That's probably my ignorance talking but "collect and train creatures for battle" seems about as general as the other things I listed so why can there be soulslike and mario and zelda clones but creature collectors are somehow a problem...
Screw Nintendo for that.

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Originally Posted by Fatch38

probably the most simple answer : blizzard being a US company so not the same law are applied and blizzard being blizzard (so having quite the staff of lawyer etc)

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Under most western countries laws, those patents wouldn't have even been possible to file several years after the fact... They only seem to exist because Japanese laws allows them to... But I'm pretty sure they're still going to need a court to rule in their favor, but sadly Nintendo can keep the lawsuit rolling longer than Pocketpair can....

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Originally Posted by Loggos

That's probably my ignorance talking but "collect and train creatures for battle" seems about as general as the other things I listed so why can there be soulslike and mario and zelda clones but creature collectors are somehow a problem...
Screw Nintendo for that.

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i would say that nintendo never sued for the concept of "collect and train creatures" because they would have lost 100% since the first game to did it was SMT. so we can clearly say they don't "own" the concept from the start. that's why they mostly sue for copyrights (most of the time)

Oh ok thank you for the insight, that makes sense (even though it's very depressing). :/

I don't think we have anything to worry about when it comes to mounts in FF14. They'd be astronomically stupid to even attempt it since there are TONS of games out there with "mounts" besides just FF14 and I highly doubt they are going to be that petty and go for it. At least in palworld's case there are a LOT of designs that straight up make people go "That's just X Pokemon", so they have something to go off from there. But like somebody mentioned, if they really wanna try to go after FF14 for "mounts" then someone could just go after them for their use of "Potions".

So I don't think FF14 has anything to worry about in this regard unless they want to kick a massive hornets nest for no reason and go after tons of MMO's other then "Because".

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Originally Posted by Kemiko

Unfortunately, from my understanding of patents is that a patent owner can sue for infringement if someone uses their patented invention without permission, even if that patent was created after the product was finished. I.E. Nintendo making the patent after Palworld was released is still, for some reason, legal and applicable. I think it's only not applicable if the patent is still pending.

A defense case for it to be invalid is for patent language to not be precise enough (I.E., if it's too broad in its wording) or if the patented technology existed before the patentee's filing (which when it comes to software is a can of worms).

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This is not true. If your creation pre-dates the creation of a patent, you cannot sue for that. However, there is an exception. If a company has a patent, then creates child patents (i.e. dividing a patent into multiple patents), the effective date of the child patents can then be applied retroactively to the date of the parent patent. So the new child patents can't be applied to anything older than the origin patent, but can cover things that the original patent did not. This appears to be what Nintendo has done with some of the recent patents.

The worst part is, it's not just the average person that thinks this practice BS, from my research it appears even actual Lawyers think this is BS and shouldn't work like this. But it does. The reason it can be done is so that patents can be amended after creation as the process of creation of Whatever is Patent is refined and the creators gain a better understanding how exactly what they created works. The problem is companies like Nintendo have weaponized this.

https://imgur.com/6iWZ3QN.png

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Originally Posted by ovIm

that is what I have heard as well (this being one of the patents in question), then yes, they were created after Palworlds release, which should become invalid given the facts. IANAL though.

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If you do a search for that same patent (without the application number), you'll see 4 pages of the same patent application from 2019 to now.

From what minimal knowledge I have about this lawsuit. The issue is in how monsters are captured. The act of throwing a ball and having it shake 3 times.

But I didn't look very far into this so I may very well be wrong.