Technology

I am positive prior art could be claimed for most if not all of those. Square Enix could cry afoul of the "mounting creatures" one as well as I'm sure many, many other earlier games on a plethora of platforms.

You could mount and ride Chocobos in Final Fantasy 2, i.e. the real "2," the JDM only one on Famicom, which was released in 1988. The aforementioned patent was only filed on Nintendo's part in 2024.

They can, to use a technical legal term, get fucked.

It's a little more specific, I think the patent is about:

• mounting either an air or ground mount
• when riding the air mount, going close to the ground transforms it into the ground mount and you keep riding it

But that's still something multiple games have done in some way I think.

IANAL - but I've worked for Big Company and have gone through the patent process a few times. A patent isn't what's written in the supporting text and abstract. It's only the exact thing written out in the claims.

First claim from the patent the abstract is from:

1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a game program causing a computer of an information processing apparatus to provide execution comprising:

   controlling a player character in a virtual space based on a first operation input;

   in association with selecting, based on a selection operation, a boarding object that the player character can board and providing a boarding instruction, causing the player character to board the boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move, wherein the boarding object is selected among a plurality of types of objects that the player character owns;

   in association with providing a second operation input when the player character is in the air, causing the player character to board an air boarding object and bringing the player character into a state where the player character can move in the air; and

   while the player character is aboard the air boarding object, moving the player character, aboard the air boarding object, in the air based on a third operation input.

Exactly everything described above must be done in that exact same way for there to be an infringement.

What's weird about it? AFAICT, Palworld doesn't violate Nintendo copyright in any meaningful sense, though it might violate Nintendo's patent claims.

That said, this lawsuit seems really late, and I wonder if that'll factor into the decision at all (i.e. if it was close, the judge/jury might take the lack of action by Nintendo as evidence of them just looking for money).

Ah, I just assumed, thanks for the correction.

That’s a patent, not a copywrite.

Software patents are also terrible, though.

And now you have to swipe up to activate the iPhone as well 🤭