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Palworld ditches Pokéball-style summoning mechanic amid Nintendo legal battle (www.eurogamer.net)

submitted 1 week ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago (4 children)

How do Japanese patents differ from USA/CAN? My general understanding of patents is that they expire after 20 years - Pokemon is older than that. Do Japanese patents have a longer duration? Did Nintendo patent a game later than the originals?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You wouldn't patent the "game" you'd patent the various forms of utility or designs within that game. So throwing a sphere at a life form to then capture it could be one patent, but maybe then you'd also file another patent to cover keeping it alive and caring for it inside the ball habitat. You might file the second off of what is called a continuation filling and in combination, as you need both actions to get the full effect, you might get a bit of extended coverage in practice.

But the bigger thing here would probably be trademark law, which is a whole different beast.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 week ago

Sure, I hadn't implied that the game was patented, but the mechanics were present in a game that is over 30 years old.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Worried what this means for Nexomon 3

[+] [email protected] -65 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (29 children)

I am not usually in favour of big companies bullying smaller companies with the law, but it's pretty egregious how much they were ripping off Pokémon.

Edited to add, apparently this was a really hot take. I am not saying that the gameplay between the games was similar, but I saw a comparison of several of the designs of the creatures for the first time when this whole kinda started kicking off a bit ago and it was the first time I realized how blatant the designs were lifted right from popular Pokémon. Combined specifically with the pokeball-alikes and like... I don't know how people can defend it. There's homage and then there's IP theft.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago

They're both based on the same source material - various mythological creatures and real animals with a twist

I used to think Pokemon was super original - but a lot of it just seems they way because we don't learn much about Japanese or asian folklore overseas.

Like take Magikarp. There's a Chinese proverb about a carp leaping through the dragons gate (an actual waterfall) turning into a dragon (meant to describe how with diligence a common person could become powerful through the civil official exams)... The weak magic carp, if diligently leveled, can become a Chinese dragon that looks exactly like the ones they use in parades.

Meouth - a wealth giving cat, many asian shops have a cat figure with a gold coin for luck. And Persian is just a lioness (a bigger cat) with the same design.

Vulpix/Ninetails - nine tailed fox

Ekans - snakE. Arbok - kobrA. Pidgey - pigeon. Pigiotto, pigeot? Reminds me of fire, fira, firaga, firaja naming scheme from final fantasy

Hitmonlee and Hitmonchan - Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan

Noticably, most of these puns and references to actual people are not copied, instead it is things like wolves and mythological creatures

If anything, it's the style of the art that makes them so similar - but copying aesthetics is how art grows and develops. It's not like they were the first or only ones to copy the style either

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