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Palworld ditches Pokéball-style summoning mechanic amid Nintendo legal battle
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this post was submitted on 11 Dec 2024
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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?
These patents were granted to Nintendo this year.
I'm not patent savvy - of they are only granted this year (as a point of origin for the patents' eventually expiry), wouldn't the years of previous Pokemon games invalidate these patents due to prior art?
If they were related to the original games, yes it would. The patents were about 3d worlds though. I believe the palworld beta was before these patents were filed, so there would be a strong case to invalidate them. It probably won't happen, because Nintendo's proposed damages was basically pocket change compared to a legal battle.
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.
Sure, I hadn't implied that the game was patented, but the mechanics were present in a game that is over 30 years old.