• Tattorack@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    So… Um… If Nintendo patented elements of Pokemon (we don’t know what the patents are yet), then… Why is TemTem allowed to live? TemTem is literally one-to-one Pokemon, all but in name.

    If, somehow, TemTem isn’t in violation of Nintendo’s patents, despite just being Pokemon made by someone else, then I’m very curious what Nintendo’s patent actually is.

    Could it be the capture ball? TemTem uses cards. Palworld uses balls like Pokemon. Did Nintendo patent the idea of capturing creatures inside of balls, specifically? Is that why Nintendo never went after TemTem?

    • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      I would love to see a Palworld update that changes the balls to cubes. Same animations and effects, same textures, just stretched over a cube.

    • isyasad@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      I’ve never heard of TemTem before and plugging it into Google Trends, it looks like it’s not even comparable to Palworld. It’s still somewhat big, looks like 500,000 copies sold. But still doesn’t really compare to what appears to be nearly 20 million Palworld players.
      Companies lose rights to protect their IP if they don’t protect it themselves, so it may be in their best interest to go after the big competitors and pretend they’ve never heard of TemTem.

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        500,000 copies sold is not insignificant. Nintendo fries even the smallest of fish. They’ll literally go out of their way to fuck up someone’s small hobby project only a niche few even care about. So if Nintendo is turning blind eye to a game that copied them in every way one could possibly copy a Pokemon game, then there’s something else going on.

        Remember, this is not a copyright case, this is a patent case. Considering Palworld is the only game vaguely similar to Pokemon in some minor ways that I’ve seen use spheres as a catching tool, I’m just (blindly) guessing it MIGHT have something to do with that.

    • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      If Temtem is a Pokemon ripoff then Pokemon is a Dragon Quest V ripoff. All these games involve collecting monsters through battle. Can anyone really patent “monster catching RPG?”

      • Tattorack@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        There are only two things Dragon Quest V and Pokemon have in common; monster taming through battle and they’re both turn based RPGs.

        Have you played or seen TemTem? It’s literally Pokemon in every way, from mechanics, level design, to even how and what kind of moves the Tems can learn.

        Nintendo goes after even the smallest infringements, so since they’ve never gone after TemTem it tells me the patent isn’t “monster catching RPG”. It’s more specific than that, and Palworld somehow infringes on it. As of yet we can only guess what the patent is.

  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Anybody who’s played palworld knows the game is nothing like pokemon. What’s next, are they going to claim they are the only company who can make games with 4 legged animals?

    • Juniper (she/her) 🫐@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      14 days ago

      They said patent violations, not copyright, so it is about some sort of mechanic or system and not the pals or any specific designs. I’m guessing the thrown ball capture system, since it seems no other developers have published anything using that specifically.

      • RogueAozame@programming.dev
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        13 days ago

        They shouldnt be able to sue for that cause a patent only lasts for 20 years in Japan. I saw some guesses that there might be a patent for one of their legends games that they are suing for.

      • Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        World of Final Fantasy is as close to a Pokemon rip off as you can get, and they didn’t get sued.

        Edit. And now I think about it, the mobile game of Rick and Morty was very much a reskin of Pokemon.

    • Caveman@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      Nintendo is making a case that the use of capsules to capture and carry creatures is their IP.

      • CaptPretentious@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Dragon Ball was using capsules to store things long before Pokemon did. And Dragon Ball Z, which ended in Japan in '96 had already done storing 'creatures in capsules. Saibamen for one. And after the Saiyan saga Bulma puts her dead friends in coffin capsules.

        So Akira Toriyama did it before Pokemon.

        • Caveman@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          Yeah, they should absolutely argue that storing things, alive or not, in capsules has been used in numerous movies and shows and that the patent is invalid. Big corporations make tons of patents all the time just in case and then see if they hold up in court later, such as Nintendo with their pokeballs in this case. They still don’t know whether Palworld is an infringement or not

    • PunchingWood@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I played it and I felt like it borrowed a lot of elements from Pokemon. It wasn’t Pokemon, but you can’t deny it took like 90% of their inspiration from Pokemon and then added guns to it.

      • towerful@programming.dev
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        13 days ago

        That’s like any FPS game ripping off any other FPS game.
        Fight, capture, tame, train, breed animals.
        Base building, research tree, enemy raids.
        Exploration, resource gathering, survival.

        I don’t think Nintendo has a monopoly on enslaving animals.

        I know what you mean, tho. It’s always described as “Pokémon with guns and 3xE gameplay”.
        But does Nintendo actually have a case that will hold up in courts?
        Pocketpair seems confident they can defend against it. So either they have done their research and are up for a fight. Or they (think they) are calling Nintendo’s bluff.
        But Nintendo has a whole pack of lawyers.

        Unfortunately there are no details on what the patents being infringemed upon are, just that they relate to “Pocket Monster”.

        • PunchingWood@lemmy.world
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          13 days ago

          I don’t believe Nintendo will hold up in court.

          But it’s the combination of it all, aside from guns and concentration camp levels of slavery, that make it look like they straight up copied ideas from Pokemon.

          It’s true Nintendo doesn’t hold the specific style or gameplay mechanics, and that’s where I think they’ll fail to win a case, but just saying it’s just so blatantly obvious where the inspiration comes from.

          • Caveman@lemmy.world
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            12 days ago

            I have a feeling that this is going to be the case. Palworld is not copying anything so it’s not copyright and doesn’t even need a “fair use” argument for it. The patents of gameplay mechanics don’t really hold up in court.

            Nintento’s legal battle chest is stuff of nightmares for smaller companies and they should be countersued for anti competitive behavior.

    • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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      13 days ago

      I don’t understand. Everyone, literally EVERYONE was calling this game pokemon with guns when it released, so why are people mad that the makers of pokemon are suing? We all saw it from the start

          • zalgotext@sh.itjust.works
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            13 days ago

            Palworld is an open world survival crafting factory/base building game, that happens to borrow the catching mechanic from Pokemon (who borrowed it from Shin Megami Tensei).

      • Croquette@sh.itjust.works
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        13 days ago

        The comparison is valid, but doesn’t mean it infringes on any patent.

        Otherwise, FromSoftware would sue the shit out of every soulslike out there.

      • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        13 days ago

        Lots of games are also called Roguelike. Based off a game called Rogue. The makers of Rogue do not get to sue the makers of Hades.

        Pets that fight for you, including being able to store them for portable carry has been done by many other games, including Ark. In fact, playing Palworld made me compare it more to Ark than Pokemon: base building, automation, catching dinos/animals/monsters of different varieties for different uses. Some can fly, some run, some can be used as parachutes. Some help automate actions at base. There is a tech tree unlocked by leveling, starting with primitive weapons and moving on to guns and higher caliber guns. Blueprints are common in ark for higher quality crafts to build at, you guessed it, crafting benches.

        Collecting wood, stone, metals, etc. Also the animal assistants can help there too, but only certain ones. Also, Ark has cryopods for storing your animals/dinosaurs. You even throw em to release.

        If they had exactly Pikachu or something it’s one thing, but similar games are just part of the business.

        • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          But we’re not talking about a game type here. You can agree that this is a dumb lawsuit, but you have to be honest. Palworld was marketed online as pokemon with guns. It’s not just a similar style but almost identically copies the characters in Pokemon. You can make a stealth action political thriller video game, but if the main character looks just like solid Snake and is called “Viper”, you gonna get sued.

          • chatokun@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            12 days ago

            Really? Why does Deathstroke and Deadpool both exist? One is DC, one is Marvel, and Deadpool pretty much started as an expy. Slade Wilson and Wade Wilson. You’re arguing from a place of what feels like it should be wrong, yet your fake example has been done in the real world and they got away with it.

            This happens so many times in industries they can often just argue parody. In fact, changing a name slightly is classic parody to avoid being sued. Japan in particular often just bleeps out a syllable or forgets a character in the name.

  • tee9000@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Copyright is bullshit! Fuck nintendo!

    Scrolls to ai related lemmy post*

    Copyright is sacred! Fuck openai!

    • mightyfoolish@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      We’re saltly because all of these rich people truly got to skirt copyright laws while regular people got in trouble for “digesting the same digital bits.” They even get to resell any work that has been processed and mixed with other works as long as it comes from their AI…

    • Schmoo@slrpnk.net
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      13 days ago

      At the root of this cognitive dissonance is who benefits and who doesn’t. Copyright law is selectively applied in a way that protects the powerful and exploits the powerless. In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor, but due to the power imbalance inherent to capitalism it is instead used only to protect the interests of capital. The fact that AI companies are granted full impunity to violate the copyright of millions is evidence that copyright law is ineffective at the task for which it was purportedly created.

      • skulbuny@sh.itjust.works
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        12 days ago

        In a capitalist economy copyright is meant to protect people’s livelihoods by ensuring they are compensated for their labor

        Whose propaganda did you suck down blindly? Copyright is meant to foster and improve the commons and public domain, and only that. The goal of copyright is not “money” and monopolies, but that’s what capitalism does to things designated as property.

        The fact you can transfer and sell your copyright (because it’s property in capitalism), it becomes a commodity to be bought and sold and traded. If copyright was not tradeable or transferable, we wouldn’t be in in this situation where art is property to be owned.

  • TeoTwawki@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Reminder that Nintendo is to Japan as Disney is to the USA.

    We can only speculate what patents are involved, might be legit might not but it doesn’t have to be legit and the actual patent they obtained could be nonsense, they have the power to bend someone over a chair because they felt like it.

    Also reminder apple managed to patent a rectangle. what countries allow to be patented is often bullshit at best.

  • p5yk0t1km1r4ge@lemmy.world
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    13 days ago

    Fuck nintendo. I really hope this blows up in their face like their stupid fucking “King Kong is dk” lawsuit. Fucking bullies. The irony that they blatantly stole the designs of pokemon from dragon quest but are butthurt at palworld for pAtEnT vIoLaTiOn is gross. So glad I just pirate their shit.

      • villainy@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Yep.

        Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd.

        Universal City Studios, Inc. v. Nintendo Co., Ltd. was a 1983 legal case heard by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York by Judge Robert W. Sweet. In their complaint, Universal Studios alleged that Nintendo’s video game Donkey Kong was a trademark infringement of King Kong, the plot and characters of which Universal claimed as their own. Nintendo argued that Universal had themselves proven that King Kong’s plot and characters were in the public domain in Universal City Studios, Inc. v. RKO General, Inc.

    • bitwolf@lemmy.one
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      12 days ago

      I’m sorry who in their right mind signed off on this patent

      NON-TRANSITORY COMPUTER-READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM HAVING STORED THEREIN GAME PROGRAM, GAME SYSTEM, INFORMATION PROCESSING APPARATUS, AND INFORMATION PROCESSING METHOD

      Thats literally any online game server

  • sumguyonline@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Stop buying Nintendo. They can’t create quality new IP’s, just rehashes over and over, at this point she ain’t got a peach, bowser mashed it into a pie, and Mario’s eating it for breakfast, lunch, an after dinner snack.

  • Tikiporch@lemmy.world
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    14 days ago

    Bad move by Nintendo. This game was on track to be forgotten. Pocketpair forgot about it months ago, but the players were starting to catch on to that. Now there will be a resurgence of interest.

    • suburban_hillbilly@lemmy.ml
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      13 days ago

      This game was on track to be forgotten

      Game is just outside the top 50 on steam and had a major content release at the end of June. This ‘game is dying’-because-it-didn’t-indefinitely-sustain-player-counts-in-the-top-10 meme is dumb as hell.

      • PunchingWood@lemmy.world
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        13 days ago

        Well statistically speaking like only 1% of their peak player count at launch was still playing the game.

        It doesn’t do bad on the top ranking out of all games on Steam, but it didn’t do great anymore either.

      • Asafum@feddit.nl
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        13 days ago

        It’s a pocketpair thing though as far as “abandoning” a game. As a craftopia player I know all too well how they start off and then drag their feet with minimal input after a certain time. It’s one thing I was worried about with palworld before it even came out. :/