Nobody saw this coming, right? Actually that’s only partially in jest– I genuinely expected the lawsuit to be for copyright infringement based on the “Pal’s” similarity to their Pokemon counterparts. Instead it’s patent infringement, which sounds to me like they gave up on the copyright approach and just tried to find something to sue for. Palworld’s explosion into the cultural zeitgeist earlier this year probably bruised Pokemon’s ego a bit, and you know how much Nintendo loves to put their lawyers to work.
On a related topic of things we saw coming (in this case because I told you it was coming)… we’re getting ready to launch the Kickstarter for the next Ctrl+Alt+Del books! This time I’ve managed to activate the “coming soon” page without accidentally launching the project weeks early. That’s a win for my anxiety levels.
If you head to the link, you can sign up to be notified when the project goes live (which should be early October, concrete date to be settled upon soon). The books are kind of a big deal for what we do here, not just because I like to collect my work into a power-outage-proof, end-of-civilization-proof format, but also in terms of their ties to the sustainability of the website and the work I do here. Apart from our Patreon, books are the other big way you can support the comic, and help me continue operating this weird business model where I first give you my work for free, and then years later ask you to buy it. So I’m really hoping you’ll come check out the project once it launches.
Its more surprising they are going for those particular patents, given the fact they have patently ignored every creature collection game that has released in the last 3 decades. They didn’t patent strike Blizzard for adding pet battles to WoW, they didn’t go after Square Enix for making a Dragon Quest monster game, or Bandi Namco for Digimon. In the Indie game sphere Tem Tem, Cassette Beasts in the last few years or the dozen’s of indies on Steam, or the countless mobile gatcha games. You seen the ads where the cute L1 dragon evolves into a scantily clad sexy… Read more »
Not to mention that a lot of those patents are so broad that they may lose those patents if the defense can prove that someone else made it first, and that some patent laws only allow them to hold it for 20 years. Those laws last for a lot less time than copyright.
Don’t worry, they got their bases covered on that – they were only granted the patent in question earlier this year.
They were granted a revision to the existing patent, not sure if that resets the expiry date though.
yeah, except those werent blatantly ripping off pokemon. palworld is.
how dare you say the truth on the internet!
ikr
Thing is, Pokemon fans have been BEGGING Nintendo for a game in a more open world, with a more mature approach to the world, with shooter/survival mechanics added. For YEARS. Nintendo ignored them and then shot down every single fan project that tried to do it.
PocketPair did nothing but exactly what the people wanted. That’s what bruises Nintendo’s ego, that someone followed the ideas they ignored in order to keep their brand the exact same and 100% safe, and made it big with them.
or maybe Idk just dont steal others ppl idea just to make some ppl happy and a shitload of money
They can’t go after DQ Monsters… given how Pokémon ripped the concept off from Dragon Quest 5 (which is 4 years older than Pokémon). Many Gen 1 Pokémon also ripped their designs off of DQ.
They’d be fools to go after Dragon Quest considering Pokemon was a rip off of the monster recruiting in Dragon Quest V.
First. What patents Nintendo is suing Palworld on have not been released to the public. There are plenty of places *speculating* but it’s almost certainly not the original patents made in the 90s. Patents last 20 years in the US, 15 in Japan, where this is being tried. Second. Nintendo sues when they know they can win. The loss of a suit doesn’t mean “Oh no, Nintendo lost money,” it means, “Oh shit, Nintendo lost any legal protections that they had.” That’s why their steps on emulation have been (relatively) slow and quiet and calculated, compared to what they WANT… Read more »
first wrong? both the pokemon company and the company in charge of palworld have released that the patent in question is about “throwing balls to capture creatures” patent
2 i agree Nintendo tends to win all its lawsuits … but the fact that they tend to sue small business that they can just “bleed out” instead of actually win a lawsuit does help in that
3 the mechanic in question that the copyright is on can be avoided by changeing the “palspheres” into “palcubes” as pokemon cannot copyright that as someone else did it before them
If it’s the patents I’ve read, then it’s about capturing monsters in a 3D open world environment without switching to a battle screen that Nintendo patented with Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
Most games you’ve listed are older than PLA and none of these allow to directly capture monsters in the open world environment – maybe Dragon Quest Monsters, haven’t played these games.
That sounds…incredibly broad. Like unenforcibly so. Imagine patenting card games where your winning hand is the match that is most statistically likely and suing poker companies for poker.
If you ask me, the very concept of patenting game mechanics or patenting “showing a minigame while the game is loading” sounds unenforcibly broad and absurd, but the Japanese patent office seems to view that differently.
candy crush tried to sue a match 3 style game. judge ruled that having similar mechanics was not enforceable. but this was also copyright not patent and different legal paths offer different rulings.
welcome to japanese law, where copyright extends to all works with no fair use clause. honestly im surprised they didnt hit the trademark suit since there was no reviews that didnt call it “pokemon with guns”.
Since Palworld never called it that, they dodged the trademark suit. Not surprised that Nintendo found something to try though.
Hope nintendo loses horribly.
Part of it too is this is going to be fought in a Tokyo court over in Japan. The copyright and patent laws are a bit different from the US copyright and patent laws, so we may see some unexpected results out of this.
The problem is that Japan often makes case rulings that protect Japanese companies even if the ruling in another court would be different.
It’s like the whaling they don’t do it to make money as often the whale meat ended up been unsold and instead local authories and pet food companies buy it the reason whaling still happens is to protect the thousands of jobs both in the boats and government officials and docks
Hey Tim, you’re not as litigious as Nintendo but I wanna ask anyway. Since the Zeke plush couldn’t get funded could I have permission to commission someone to make Zeke, Ethan, and Lucas plushies?
For personal use? I don’t care. But you can’t sell them.
Cool thanks! Yeah, just to have on my shelf with my CAD books.
Ah yes but can the creator sell them to him? XD
He just said yes. He’s okay with it being manufactured if it’s not for resale.
If you do this (or equivalent), can I suggest getting duplicates made and sending a one set to the creator (Tim in this case)?
Just a genuine suggestion, might not be possible, but something I’ve seen with other creators
Send pictures for how they turn out! Fan tributes are a nice thing!
I dont hear about palworld anymore, it was loud and fast but didnt last
(at least, not around me)(note: I cant edit my comment it says “the mail adress is invalid”)
having the same issue with comment editing = /
Wasn’t that exactly what the devs stated earlier this year?
Something along the lines of “don’t expect any major update soon”…
The devs never meant to make a game that would last. They meant to make a game that was fun, whether people wanted to “one and done it” or not. And without any live service stuff, why would it need to last anyway? It’s a one time buy.
Even taking that into account it’s still doing reasonable numbers on Steam last I checked, just not the WTFhuge numbers it had on launch.
idk man I’ve heard of solo game lasting longer but I dont really care about it, I was just saying 🙂
Anything and everything monster-friend related is up for lawsuits with Nintendo, I swear…
I think you can safely remove “monster-friend related” from that sentence and still be perfectly correct.
The suit of the lawyer can’t be a coincidence. Well done.
“Legalpuff, I choose you.”
(The idea of an evolved form of Jigglypuff being a lawyer is just too funny to me.)
I’ll just slap a tie on my electric rodent and call them Pikasue.
D@mnit.
I wish I had thought of that.
OMG, i almost snarfed my coffee when i read this:
“and help me continue operating this weird business model where I first give you my work for free, and then years later ask you to buy it.”
Good for Nintendo. Palworld’s blatantly obvious plagiarism of Pokémon and complete lack of own creativity should be punished, along with all the other clear rip-off games. It’s a shame that it’s so hard to prove copyright infringement / theft of intellectual property that they had to come after them with a more obscure lawsuit, but at least they actually got punished for their clearly immoral actions.
Ooh, I guess, by your logic, Atlus should sue Nintendo for their blatantly obvious plagiarism of Shin Megami Tensei, since Pokemon came out in 1996, and SMT already had half a dozen games under it’s belt by that point. Atlus is STILL making their SMT games, so this is clearly an immoral theft by Nintendo.
Copyright is hard to prove specifically BECAUSE it’s very narrow. If Disney had their way you could never have a mouse protagonist in any form of media ever because Mickey.
Say it with me now: “You can’t copyright an idea!”
Nintendo can copyright the appearance of Pikachu, but can’t stop you from making elemental mice of your own creation. Or satires of pikachu. Or any other number of things. This is a GOOD thing because it would make it impossible to have any kind of origional series because it’s similar to something else.
you can copyright an idea, in south korea
Well, it would be fun if they could crowd-source the defense. There are probably many people out there who felt ripped of by Nintendo multiple times and would like to stick it to them. Also, they can only go after the business covered under Japanese law. I assume, if they try to enforce something like that outside Japan they will get told no.
you’re right but good faith isnt a thing you should have on the internet
As a layperson, some of the comparison images in this article strain the credibility of “coincidence”. I mean some of them a re a stretch, but some of them are very “they obviously had the corresponding pokemon open in another window when they created this one”
https://www.ign.com/articles/pokmon-lawsuit-shows-just-how-seriously-nintendo-views-the-threat-of-palworld-patent-expert-says
Oh I don’t think anyone believe any of it happened by “coincidence” XD
The funniest part is IF Nintendo wins, they open themselves up to a lawsuit by SquareEnix. After all, the entire concept of monster trapping and taming (and many of the first Gen designs) were stolen from Dragon Quest. DQ5 (which came out 4 years before Pokémon) was the biggest game in the series and is the biggest RPG series in Japan. This is the one that introduced monster taming to the series, where they leveled up, could be geared, and function in your party. This feature was so popular it led to the DQMonsters spin-off series. So… yeah Nintendo didn’t… Read more »
If it is based on patents, then not really unless DQ had patents for that exact same system before hand. You can patent specific systems like “damage then enemy, then throw a ball at it, with the chance of capture based on targets remaining health and status effects, and the ball indicates progress by wobbling up to 3 times, all in a 3d world without transition to a battle scene”. But if a game did the same in a 2d world, and used cubes, and the chance of capture were based on different factors, that is likely enough differences not… Read more »
If you don’t rate, litigate.
I was confident from the outset that Palworld was safe from copyright attacks. Similar style and design language isn’t enough to be a copyright violation. It has to be essentially the exact same characters and art, and it’s not in Palworld’s case.
I wasn’t expecting gameplay patents (which are some bullshit).
SOME of these characrers are similar enough I can see the argument of “You just had a picture of the pokemon on the next screen as reference when making this, didn’t you.” But some of the ‘comparisons’ Nintendo cites are a hell of a stretch to say they’re similar enough for copyright.
One thing I find very interesting about this whole thing is that from what I’ve been seeing on social media and gaming sites while the Japanese gamers are firmly behind Nintendo, a lot of the North American/European gamers seem to be on Palworld’s side. A bit of a ‘east vs west’ scenario.
Smoothbrain pokemon fans I guess.
Just going to say, I think you missed an opportunity by not making the lawyer look like Phoenix Wright. Hahaha
If they were suing for Pals looking like Pokemon sure, but sueing because they think they can enforce a patent on “collecting monsters”? They don’t have a leg to stand on.
In the USA, I’d agree 100%. But Japanese laws I’ve no idea how much similarity there is betwen them for precident.
If they win, I hope SE sues them into bankruptcy
Who said it was just about “collecting monsters”? There would have been many more if that was the only criteria.
The thing to understand is Nintendo are not expecting to “win” this in court. The copyright and patent issues are clearly BS (To the extent that they didn’t even attempt the copyright angle), and there’s zero chance that a court would ever find them in the right (At least not without basically causing a bunch of issues since the patents are clearly too broad and not unique). What Nintendo is doing is using the legal process itself as a hammer, the age old story of “While I know my lawsuit is BS, I have more money for lawyers than you… Read more »
I’m just surprised that Harmony Gold didn’t sue first.
And here I thought catching/commanding demons with rings/circular seals was something in the bible. So, umm.. are they going to go after ministries next?
Not really surprising Pocketpair Inc. games is a blurry line between inspiration and theft Only reason why people are siding with them are these two, first is this anti-nintendo bs. and second is they call themself as an small indie company which is also bs. The moment indie company is no longer indie is when it becomes Corporations same goes with Incorporation. Reason for this is because company has some leeway with rules but Co. and Inc. follows stock ruling and copyright is different with these because it’s not the person who owns it is the corporations that owns it… Read more »
Imagine all they do is say it’s a pal sphere and they’re good to go. I personally hope it goes well for them. I really enjoyed their game, pretty good launch in my opinion too. I’m going to wait a year and go back to it again, hopefully they win the lawsuit.
OBJECTION !!!