palworld – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Stories filed under: "palworld"

Patents Nintendo Suing Palworld Over Confirmed, But, Damn, This Suit Is Weird

from the none-of-this-makes-sense dept

If you’ve followed along with our coverage on the hit video game Palworld, developed by Pocketpair, you will know that Nintendo and the Pokémon Co. has sued Pocketpair for patent infringement. Prior to the suit, there had been a ton of speculation that a lawsuit would be filed, but that it would be a copyright infringement suit. That was because there was a clear inspirational element in Palworld harkening back to Pokémon properties, though we also argued that no direct copying had occurred, only concepts and ideas repurposed. For that reason, I was excited that any copyright suit would serve as a demonstration of the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law. And I generally believed that such a suit would be filed, given the overtly litigious history of both Nintendo and The Pokémon Co.

Instead we got the patent infringement lawsuit. Speculation began immediately as to what patent or patents would be at the heart of that suit. Generally, said speculation landed on a parent and several divisional patents that involve throwing an object at an on-screen character or creature in a video game in order to capture it. That itself was somewhat perplexing, as games that are older than Pokémon have had similar mechanics to that in the past.

But now we have confirmation that that speculation was mostly correct.

“The Plaintiffs,” says Pocketpair, “claim that ‘Palworld,’ released by us on January 19, 2024, infringes upon the following three patents held by the Plaintiffs, and are seeking an injunction against the game and compensation for a portion of the damages incurred between the date of registration of the patents and the date of filing of this lawsuit.”

Looking up those patents, the first alludes to a system where a player aims and fires an “item” toward a character in a field, and in doing so triggers combat, and then dives into extraordinary intricacies about switching between modes within this. The second is very similar, but seems more directly focused on tweaking previous patents to including being able to capture Pokémon in the wild, rather than only during battle. The third, rather wildly, seems to be trying to claim a modification to the invention of riding creatures in an open world and being able to transition between them easily.

I’ll restate what I said in the previous post about these patents. These patents cover broad ideas. It’s a wonder to me why those patents were ever granted in the first place. The paperwork covering them, though rife with pretty diagrams and pictures, doesn’t exactly outline the sort of inventive content I was expecting. Instead, they appear to cover concepts of game mechanics, as though Nintendo or The Pokémon Co. could gobble up the right to use them in video games. The last of these patents in the quote above is perhaps the best example of this.

But it gets even starnger after that.

The statement also includes details on the damages Nintendo is seeking, for what it’s claiming is a violation of it intellectual property. The company wants 10 million yen to be equally split between Nintendo Co., Ltd., and The Pokémon Company. That works out to just under $33,000 each.

All of this for roughly $66,000? I’d have to think that any such award would be eaten into heavily by whatever time and monetary investment these two companies have made into this lawsuit. What can explain the desire by Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. to move forward with this suit when there is so little on the line?

The best I can come up with is that both of these companies just can’t help themselves when it comes to intellectual property. They seem to be more interested in getting their pound, or perhaps ounce, of flesh than making any sort of sound business decisions.

Filed Under: palworld, patents, pokemon
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company

Speculation: Patent At Heart Of ‘Palworld’ Suit Could Be For Capturing Characters With A Ball

from the patently-absurd dept

As we just talked about the joint lawsuit filed in Japan by Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. against Pocketpair, the company behind the hit game Palworld, we still don’t have all the details. But one of the strange things about the suit is that is not a copyright or trademark suit, which is what everyone expected as soon as the game launched. Instead, this is supposedly a patent infringement suit, with the plaintiffs claiming that Palworld infringes on several of their patents. This led everyone from the folks at Pocketpair itself to the public to ask the obvious question: what patents?

Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. have yet to provide this detail, so we’re in the speculative stage at the moment. That being said, if this really is a patent infringement suit, some commentators out there believe they have found the likely culprits, which are several divisional patents recently filed for with the USPTO.

Kiyoshi Kurihara, a Japanese patent attorney and consultant on intellectual property spoke to Yahoo Japan on the lawsuit (translated by Automaton), and pointed to a “killer patent” that revolves around the mechanic of catching Pokémon itself.

“It seems like it would be hard to avoid if you want to make a Pokémon-like game, and it’s easy to infringe if you’re not careful,” Kurihara is quoted as saying.

The way a divisional patent works is to isolate specific aspects within a parent patent. This tends to happen when a single parent patent contains multiple protected elements, then divided out in the divisional patents. The patent that Kurihara and many others are pointing to in this case is Japanese Patent No. 7545191, which essentially covers the game mechanic of capturing a character with a “capture item”, in this case a Poké Ball.

Aiming a capture item (Poké Ball) at a character placed on the field (Pokémon), releasing the capture item in a direction determined by player input, judgment of whether capturing is successful or not upon contact between the capture item and Pokémon, and changing of the Pokémon’s status to “owned by the player” when capturing is successful. In addition, the patent also covers the mechanic of having capture probability displayed to the player, regardless of whether it uses colors, graphics or numbers.

While the divisional patents were just filed for weeks ago, likely in preparation for this lawsuit, the parent patent has been held since 2021. Because of that, it would still be valid to use against Pocketpair.

Although you have to wonder just how valid this patent is, not to mention why the plaintiffs haven’t wielded it against others. Is throwing a ball to capture a character really patent worthy? Is it really a mechanic invented by Nintendo and The Pokémon Co.? Hell, the Ghostbusters video game came out in 2009 and, as in the movies, involves a capture device you have to toss at ghosts and then guide them into it. That was well before the 2021 patent was granted.

Kurihara hinted at some of this in his comments above. A patent like this would preclude anyone from making a game that is inspired by Pokémon games. It would also be very easy to infringe upon unintentionally, given its real or potential broad use in the gaming industry.

And regardless of how this lawsuit shakes out, this sure looks like Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. scratching and clawing for any excuse to sue the competition. Maybe it would be better to just compete instead.

Filed Under: japan, palworld, patents, poke ball, pokemon, prior art, throwing a ball
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company

Nintendo, Pokémon Co. Sue Pocketpair Over ‘Palworld’ For… Patent Infringement?

from the a-patent-for-what-exactly? dept

Well, it took awhile, but we finally got here. Earlier this year, we discussed the game Palworld shortly after its release. It made our pages because the game is clearly partially inspired by the Pokémon series of video games, with some very stark differences. Similarities aside, the characters in the game are certainly different than those in Pokémon games, coupled with the use of firearms in the game along with other game mechanics that made it demonstrably different than any other game. As we highlighted at the time, this made Palworld something of an example of how the idea/expression dichotomy works and we warned that, while Nintendo or The Pokémon Co. might eventually pursue legal action over the game, a copyright suit ought to have a hard time surviving a defense using that dichotomy.

Which is why, while I wasn’t terribly surprised to learn that Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. have in fact sued Pocketpair over its Palworld game, I sure wasn’t expecting to learn that it was doing so over patent infringement.

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced they have filed a patent-infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair, the makers of the heavily Pokémon-inspired Palworld. The Tokyo District Court lawsuit seeks an injunction and damages “on the grounds that Palworld infringes multiple patent rights,” according to the announcement.

Beyond mere copyright concerns, though, Nintendo’s lawsuit announcement specifically alleges patent infringement on the part of Palworld (though this difference could come down to vagaries of translation from the original Japanese). A lawsuit over patents would seemingly require some unique game mechanic or feature that has been specifically granted stronger protections by the patent office. While the Pokémon Company does hold a number of (US) patents, most of them seem to deal with various server communications methods or the sleep monitoring capabilities of Pokémon Sleep.

Adding to the mystery in all of this is that nobody but the plaintiffs seems to have any idea what these patents that were infringed upon could be. I tend to agree that perhaps there’s a translation issue at work here and this really is instead a copyright and/or trademark infringement suit, but we’ll have to wait for more to come out to see.

If it is patents, I’ll be surprised. I’ll be even more surprised if there is any validity to such a patent infringement claim. That’s just not typically how these things in the video game industry work.

But if it really is a trademark and/or copyright claim, it should fail and fail hard… if this suit were brought in the United States. In Japan, however, it’s more complicated. Japanese copyright law does not have an explicit idea/expression dichotomy in the way US copyright law has, but the courts there do sometimes give a nod to and use it in a similar way.

But any sane copyright law would allow for games to be inspired by, but not replicas of, an original work. The whole point of copyright generally is not to allow any one entity own the concepts that go into a video game, but instead the specific expression of the same. And, for what it’s worth, Pocketpair too appears to be confused as to what this is all about.

“We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement,” Pocketpair says in a statement. “At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.”

And so now we wait to see what the actual details here are. Frankly, sans some translation issue, none of this makes much sense to me. And while Nintendo and The Pokémon Co. certainly have shown themselves to be willing to stretch IP laws to be the bully generally, this seems to go beyond the norm.

Filed Under: copyright, idea expression dichotomy, japan, palworld, patents, pokemon, satire, trademark, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company

Palworld Creator Loves That Others Are Trying To Clone The Game

from the best-pals dept

We’ve had several posts on the video game sensation that is Palworld in the past. Given that the game has been described by others as “Pokémon, but with guns”, we kicked things off both wondering if Nintendo was going to try to take some kind of misguided legal action on the game, while also pointing out that the game is an excellent case study in copyright’s idea/expression dichotomy. After all, the game does not do any direct copying of any Pokémon IP, but does draw obvious inspiration from some of the base ideas behind that IP. In fact, highlighting the dichotomy further was a mod that injected actual Pokémon IP into Palworld, which Nintendo then managed to get taken down.

One of the things writers of this sort of content like me tend to fret about, however, is how often rank hypocrisy suddenly shows up among subjects such as the creators behind Palworld. It’s not uncommon to see a content creator attempt to go after folks doing to them exactly what the creator did in drawing inspiration from others. If you were worried the people behind Palworld would fall into this category, however, it appears very much that you were worried for nothing.

With the success of the game, it was only a matter of time before someone, or many someones, tried to cash in on its success by making similar games, or “clones.” PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe noticed this was happening with Palworld and reacted thusly.

“Tencent is already making a Palworld clone game!” PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe recently tweeted,” according to a translation by Automaton. He seemed happy about it. “These are incredible times,” he wrote. Some initially interpreted Mizobe as being critical of these moves. An IGN story described him as accusing other companies of ripping off Palworld, a framing the CEO rejected.

“To ‘accuse’ someone of something, means to say they are doing something wrong,” Mizobe wrote in a follow-up tweet responding to the IGN story. “I don’t think what Tencent is doing is wrong. I’m proud that other companies want to make games like Palworld. The industry historically innovates when we borrow ideas from games we love. I’m surprised that many high-quality mobile games are already in development.”

No going legal. No threats. Not even a hint of a complaint. Instead, Mizobe acknowledged what we all already know to be true: video games, like other forms of culture, are and have always been built on what came before it. If the success of Palworld spawns similar games after the fact, that’s not only not a problem, it’s a good thing for gaming culture. Hell, Mizobe even went so far as to praise some of these games’ quality.

Imagine Nintendo doing anything like this. You simply can’t. In fact, when Palworld was released, Nintendo made some vague comments about looking into the game to see if it wanted to pursue any legal action. You know, the exact opposite of the route Mizobe took.

Who knows if these new Palworld clones that Tencent and others are apparently developing will ever see the light of day. We won’t know if they’re actually rip-offs until they’re out, but Mizobe doesn’t seem to mind either way.

And why should he? I imagine he’s far too busy counting all the money his company is making by focusing on making a successful game rather than wringing his hands over some clones that may or may not ever gain any traction.

Filed Under: copying, innovation, inspiration, palworld, takuro mizobe, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon, tencent

Palworld Modder Changes ‘Pokémon’ Mod To Include Generic Characters Instead

from the that'll-surely-do-it dept

Well, this is certainly moving fast. We had begun talking about the recently released PC game Palworld as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law, specifically as the game has both been described as “Pokémon, but with guns” while also not containing any specific Pokémon copyrighted expression within it. While the Pokémon people had begun making some noises about wanting to look into whether the game does infringe any of its copyrights anyway, modder ToastedShoes released a mod for the game that almost seemed perfectly designed to illustrate the point I was making. His mod specifically injected actual Pokémon characters and assets into the game. Nintendo promptly took down a video preview of the mod via a DMCA notice as a result.

And sometimes that’s where these stories end. Other times, such as in this case, the modder decides to make some changes after the complaint that are specifically designed to give the rightsholder something of a middle finger. It seems that ToastedShoes has gone back and redesigned the mod such that it now includes mostly generic placeholder characters once more, rather than specific Pokémon expressions, with one notable exception.

He explains in a video that “we were planning on releasing [the mod] for free on Nexus”, which clearly isn’t possible anymore. The intended video went up on YouTube, but before it could even hit 100,000 views it was taken down. Not one to be stopped, Toasted Shoes’ team of modders has instead devised an infernal concoction of bootleg Pokémon, straight from the pits of Hades.

Using a mod that is “not a reference to anything, I promise,” the YouTuber plays through the adventures of “teenage boy in cap” as searches far and wide, catching legally distinct creatures. This ‘loveable’ cast of characters includes Yellow Rat, Braided Sheep, Fire Fox, and everybody’s favourite—Fat Cock.

You can see from the video embedded below that the changes made somehow both create characters that are fairly distinct from actual Pokémon characters while also retaining the clear impression that ToastedShoes’ mod is inspired, in some cases quite sarcastically, from those same characters.

Will any of this keep the Pokémon people at bay? I doubt it, given their reputation as jealous protectors of both their IP rights and the rights they sometimes imagine they have. But at the end of the day we are back to the idea/expression dichotomy. “Teenage boy in cap” is an idea, while Ash Ketchum is expression. The character in this game is not Ash Ketchum, no matter the inspiration for the character to begin with.

As for that one notable exception? It has nothing to do with Pokémon, but could land this into DMCA territory with an entirely different player, I suppose.

Teenage boy in cap’s ordeals culminate in a climactic battle with Saul Goodman, who conjures a giant cease & desist letter out of a small mason jar. It’s a reskin of the game’s Syndicate Tower battle with Rayne, who rides astride an Electabuzz Grizzbolt. I mean Grizzbolt. Don’t hurt me, Saul, I have a family.

Points for humor and creativity, to be sure, but we’ll see just how this all shakes out with the Pokémon people, AMC, and whoever else wants to take IP potshots at this game.

But if all of this does nothing else, I at least appreciate the way it illuminates just how far from copyright infringement the original game, Palworld, actually is.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, mods, palworld, pokemon, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair

Nintendo DMCAs ‘Palworld’ Mod That Puts Actual Pokémon Into The Game

from the highlighting-my-point dept

Just days ago, we were talking about the release of PC game Palworld, an open-world monster collecting game that has often been described as “Pokémon, but with guns.” The point of my post was that this game served as a great example of the idea/expression dichotomy in practice. This game, whatever similarities it may have in concept or otherwise to Pokémon and its related video games, is not a direct copy of the actual expression that is the Pokémon Company’s games. Now, as we mentioned in that last post, the Pokémon Company is making noises about reviewing the game to see if it wants to take action. And perhaps it will, but based on everything I’ve seen any such action should fail on the merits, at least in the United States.

And if I wanted to highlight the point illustrated in that first post, I probably couldn’t have asked for a better real world event than Nintendo DMCAing a mod for Palworld that puts actual Pokémon IP into the game.

Nintendo has taken action against the Palworld mod that would have made the “Pokémon With Guns” label much more literal. So if you were hoping to play Pocketpair’s monster-taming survival game as long-time Pokémon anime protagonist Ash Ketchum capturing and enslaving Game Freak’s monsters, you might want to temper your expectations, as the mod seems to be in a more dubious position.

The mod was revealed yesterday, January 22 by one of its creators, YouTuber ToastedShoes, who posted a short clip teasing the mod and a full video that went up on the channel today, January 23. However, the teaser has been hit with a DMCA from Nintendo on X (formerly Twitter). As a result, the mod will not be made publicly available right now as previously planned, as ToastedShoes wants to “tread lightly for the time being.”

Now, I could also pivot to suggesting that there is absolutely no need for Nintendo to take even this action. I refuse to believe that there is some massive group out there that would be out buying Nintendo’s Pokémon games, or hardware, but now won’t due to the existence of this one mod for this one game. That’s just not how this works.

But the fact is that Nintendo is within its rights when it comes to copyright and this particular mod. And for the exact reason why I believe it wouldn’t be within those rights if it took legal action against Palworld in general. The mod injects Nintendo’s expression into the game, which shares only idea similarities with Nintendo’s games.

While the mod that actually uses Pokémon characters may be on Nintendo’s radar, Pocketpair believes the game itself is safe from Mario’s legal team because it doesn’t explicitly use any copyrighted characters.

I agree. I won’t be surprised if Nintendo actually ends up suing Pocketpair over the game, but I will be surprised if any legal action was successful.

Filed Under: copyright, dmca, mod, palworld, pokemon, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company

Palworld Is a Great Example Of The Idea/Expression Dichotomy

from the express-yourself dept

When it comes to copyright suits or conflicts that never should have existed, one of the most common misunderstandings that births them is not understanding the idea/expression dichotomy in copyright law. Even to most laypeople, once you explain it, it’s quite simple. You can copyright a specific expression of something, such as literature, recorded music, etc., but you cannot copyright a general idea. So, while Superman may be subject to copyright protections as a character and in depictions of that character, you cannot copyright a superhero that flies, wears a cape, shoots beams from his eyes, and has super strength. For evidence of that, see: Homelander from The Boys.

But while Homelander is a good case study in the protections offered by the idea/expression dichotomy, a more perfect one might be the recently released PC game Palworld, which has often been described as “Pokémon, but with guns.” This thing is a megahit already, hitting Early Access mid-January and also already hitting 1 million concurrent players. And if you’re wondering just how “Pokémon, but with guns” this game is, well…

The art styles are similar, it’s essentially a monster-collecting game involving battles, etc. and so on. You get it. And this has led to a whole lot of speculation out there that all of this somehow constitutes copyright infringement, or plagiarism, on the part of publisher PocketPair. There is likewise speculation that it’s only a matter of time before Nintendo, Game Freak, or The Pokémon Co. sues the hell out of PocketPair over all of this.

And that may still happen — the Pokemon company says it’s investigating Palworld. All of those companies have shown themselves to be voracious IP enforcers, after all. But the fact is that there is nothing in this game that is a direct copy of any expression owned by any of those entities. To that end, when asked about any concerns over lawsuits, PocketPair is taking a very confident posture.

On the other hand, we had a chance to talk to PocketPair’s CEO Takuro Mizobe before Palworld’s release, and addressing this topic, Mizobe mentioned that Palworld has cleared legal reviews, and that there has been no action taken against it by other companies. Mizobe shared PocketPair’s stance on the issue, stating, “We make our games very seriously, and we have absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies.”

Mizobe has also commented that, in his personal opinion, Palworld is not at all that similar to Pokémon, even citing other IPs that Palworld more closely resembles. (Related article) He encouraged users to see past the rumors and give Palworld a chance.

And he’s right. The game mechanics themselves go far beyond anything Pokémon has on offer. And while we can certainly say that even some of the Pals themselves look as though they were inspired by some well-known Pokémon, there are more than enough differences in sum-total to make any claim that this is some kind of direct ripoff simply untrue. Some of the ideas are very, very similar. The expression, however, is different.

In addition to the legal review that Mizobe mentioned, it’s not like the game as a concept has been kept a secret, either.

Though it released just a few days ago, Palworld’s concept and content has been open to the public for quite a while, and were even presented at the Tokyo Game Show in both 2022 and 2023. Many users are of the opinion that, if there were basis for plagiarism-related legal action, the relevant parties would have already acted by now.

I would normally agree, but in this case, well, it’s Pokémon and Nintendo, so who knows. Maybe legal action is coming, maybe not. If it does come, however, it should fail. And fail miserably. All because of the idea/expression dichotomy.

Filed Under: copyright, idea expression dichotomy, palworld, pokemon, pokemon with guns, video games
Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company