Nintendo's Pokeball patent could be at the heart of its Palworld lawsuit, and judging by a 29-year-old precedent it could change monster-collecting RPGs for decades
Sep. 20, 2024“Is this good? Well, it’s good for Nintendo”
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While Palworld initially came under close scrutiny due to thesimilarities its creature designs shared with various Pokemon, it seemsNintendo has given up that line of attack with this patent lawsuit. If Nintendo were concerned about what Pals look like, this would likely be a copyright lawsuit. A patent lawsuit suggests that Nintendo’s got exclusive rights on some game mechanic that appears in Palworld, but the publisher hasn’t been specific about what those patents entail.
Nintendo has, again, not confirmed whether this Pokeball patent is part of the lawsuit, and it has claimedmultiplepatents were infringed, but it’s tough to imagine a world where it’s not part of the court proceedings. If Nintendo is successfully able to defend its exclusive rights to this game mechanic, history shows this could have a major effect on other games in the future.
The most famous example of a game mechanic patent isNamco’s 1995 patenton minigames during loading screens. In the early days of the PS1, when the nascent CD medium was introducing console gamers to the horrors of extended loading times, Namco started including shrunken versions of its arcade classics to help players pass the time while waiting for their then-modern games to load.
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Another, more recent example comes inMiddle-earth: Shadow of Mordor’s patented Nemesis system- a memorable feature that seemed like an obvious thing for other games to pull inspiration from. Yet that patent has meant no major studio has even tried. No matter the outcome of this Palworld lawsuit, it’s easy to see a world where any future takes on the creature-collecting RPG might have to beverycareful about how they let you capture those monsters.
Nintendo, certainly, is not a company that’s afraid to defend its legal rights, and its own patents have already changed the course of the game industry in other ways. “This is why Xbox had Kinect andSony’s gesture controller uses a camera; because Nintendo had a really strong set of patents around controllers moving in space,” former Pokemon Company lawyer Don McGowan tellsGame File. “Nintendo is a company that understands the value of having their games feel like they’re integrated with their console, because at their heart they’re a consumer electronics company. They exist to sell you things. So its games are designed to take advantage of the features of its things. Is this good? Well, it’s good for Nintendo.”
“Nintendo felt threatened” by Palworld’s sales success and anime expansion, analyst says: “This lawsuit would have never happened if Palworld had 500 users per day.”
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