Worth reading the article, but for the TL:drs and comment readers:
A patent attorney has narrowed down the list of potential candidates that could be central to Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair to 28 patents.
Out of those, one particular intellectual property describing creature-capture mechanics was labeled as a “killer patent” that would be difficult not to infringe when making a game with monster-taming elements.
The said property is part of a recently approved patent family consisting of three more patents, all of which were approved mere weeks before Nintendo and The Pokemon Company sued Pocketpair.
If this is really Nintendo’s strategy, they’re going to be hosed, even in Japanese courts. Pokemon isn’t even the first game with these mechanics, Dragon Quest (a Square Enix property) and Shin Megami Tensei (an Atlas property) had the mechanic and came out before Pokemon, plus the original Pokemon released over 20 yeares ago.
Worth reading the article, but for the TL:drs and comment readers:
If this is really Nintendo’s strategy, they’re going to be hosed, even in Japanese courts. Pokemon isn’t even the first game with these mechanics, Dragon Quest (a Square Enix property) and Shin Megami Tensei (an Atlas property) had the mechanic and came out before Pokemon, plus the original Pokemon released over 20 yeares ago.
Don’t we tame and capture Yoshi? Heh