Board 8 > So, Nintendo's "Summoning and Fight" Patent

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.polygon.com/nintendo-pokemon-patent-palworld-summon-game-mechanics/

"Nintendo and The Pokmon Company have been granted a patent related to the Pokmon series which could pose "a fundamental threat to creativity and innovation in the games industry," according to a new report and analysis from a patent lawyer. The patent relates to gameplay mechanics introduced in the Pokmon Scarlet and Violet games, but the broad nature of the newly issued grant could impact games that use summoning mechanics.
As originally reported by Games Fray, U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397 was filed in 2023 by Nintendo and The Pokmon Company, and granted approval by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on Sept. 2 without objection. That patent covers the gameplay mechanic of summoning a character and letting it fight another in other words, your standard Pokmon battle. Naturally, the full patent is more specifically defined, denoting a character moving in a virtual space who summons a "sub character" that can move and automatically fight another character.
You can review the full 45-page patent at the Internet Archive for an in-depth explanation.
Games Fray, which covers regulatory issues related to the gaming industry, and has closely monitored the legal battle between Palworld maker PocketPair and The Pokmon Company, calls the quick approval of patent '397 an "actually shocking" development. Author Florian Mueller argues the patent grant is "bad news for the videogame industry."
Patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon seems to agree with that take. In a report from PC Gamer, Sigmon says the USPTO's quick and uncontested approval of patent '397 was "extremely unusual and raises a large number of red flags."
"[B]ad patents like this cast a massive shadow on the industry," Sigmon said.
Whether Nintendo and The Pokmon Company will engage in "lawfare" over their patent approvals beyond their war with PocketPair remains to be seen. But what is clear is that Nintendo and The Pokmon Company have new tools with which to go after Pokmon-inspired competitors that might offend the Japanese companies behind those games. The Palworld developer has already changed its game in response to legal action."

Has Nintendo really gone too far?

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/089908009/publication/US12403397B2?q=US12403397

The relevant part that would be protected (I basically just edited out the bit where it says it's a game):

[...] performing control of causing a sub character to appear on the field, based on a first operation input, and
when an enemy character is placed at a location where the sub character is caused to appear, controlling a battle between the sub character and the enemy character by a first mode in which the battle proceeds based on an operation input, and
when the enemy character is not placed at the location where the sub character is caused to appear, starting automatic control of automatically moving the sub character that has appeared; and
performing control of moving the sub character in a predetermined direction on the field, based on a second operation input, and, when the enemy character is placed at a location of a designation, controlling a battle between the sub character and the enemy character by a second mode in which the battle automatically proceeds.

It seems to be about summoning a sub character (Pokmon) and deciding whether or not to engage some sort of auto-battle system based on the relative positions of your Pokmon, the opponent and a designation (some sort of marker you can put down, I'd guess).

If you actually read the patent it's very clearly about specifically protecting games that look, play and are programmed exactly like Scarlet and Violet. The internet is out of control with rage bait and misinformation on this one. Still don't love seeing game mechanics in general getting patented, but this one is honestly almost completely harmless compared to something like the Nemesis System getting locked away for ages.

Man, nobody tell them about Megaten.

I don't understand how they can patent that. Tons of games have summoning systems. And even if this about auto battles only, every game that has a Summoner or Necromancer class is screwed.

I'll be honest, I only know about this on surface level

but like, Game Freak got this idea from Ultraman with it's Capsule Kaiju. Hell they even wanted to call it Capumon at first.

I wonder if they can now go after Ultraman for this shit since they were granted ownership

Xiahou_Shake posted...

If you actually read the patent it's very clearly about specifically protecting games that look, play and are programmed exactly like Scarlet and Violet. The internet is out of control with rage bait and misinformation on this one. Still don't love seeing game mechanics in general getting patented, but this one is honestly almost completely harmless compared to something like the Nemesis System getting locked away for ages.

What you're describing sounds like a copyright. You can't sell a game that's identical to one of Nintendo's games, of course.

My quickly skimmed understanding is that this won't affect necromancers, summoners, etc, and for your game to violate this you have to do a bunch of very specifically Pokemon things with pokeball equivalents

Still not excellent