From the translation of the claims, they appear to describe Pokémon-style activities, with ‘191 focused on the act of throwing a ball at characters in a field, ‘117 tied to aiming, and ‘390 on riding characters.

If this is indeed the case, the lawsuit is clearly illegitimate (in the real sense, can't speak for legal nuances). Not surprising.

[–] simple@lemm.ee 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

That's not exactly it. I read the description of '191 and it seems to be more like "throwing a ball to capture a character and place it in the player's possession or throwing it to release a captured character". You can see the patent drawings also depecting that, so it's basically a patent of the Pokeball.

Not a lawyer so I have no idea how it'll go in court but it does sound like Palworld infringes on this. It's kinda funny that they could've avoided this by being a bit more legally distinct, like how TemTem throws cards instead of balls.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 22 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Interesting. Yes, that is a bit more specific.

I personally do not support game design patents because that's not how gaming works (and people who file such game design patents know this).

What are the other two patents like if you don't mind me asking? Aiming in particular seems openly malicious (as do mounts to be honest).

[–] simple@lemm.ee 16 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The second one is an older application of the first patent (pokeball again). The third one is literally just being able to mount an object or creature with some caveats like a flying one having to come down and carry you up, that one is ridiculous and a lot of games do something similar all the time.

[–] Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world 5 points 1 month ago

Cheers!

[–] LordGimp@lemm.ee 0 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Skyrim did it first with dragons. Honestly I bought palworld specifically to spite shitendo and ended up pleasantly surprised by a very playable game. Shitendo is just mad that someone else did it better on a shoestring budget

[–] Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I'm pretty sure there were flying mounts even before Skyrim. Hell, go all the way back to joust.

[–] Walican132 2 points 1 month ago

Didn’t you know gaming started with Skyrim. 🤦

[–] BakedCatboy@lemmy.ml 12 points 1 month ago

It would be funny if a legal defense would have been using an n-sided 3d polygon that definitely isn't a sphere. Is a tetrahedron legally distinct enough? How about a truncated isocohedron? Seems silly for the shape to matter.

[–] brlemworld@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

The patents were filed after Palworld was released

[–] smeg@feddit.uk 2 points 1 month ago

The one thing about patent law I know is that you can't patent something that already exists in the wild ("prior art"), so surely that can't be the case, and if it is then it's open-and-shut, right?