• ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    20
    ·
    2 months ago

    That’s probably true in normal countries. Japanese patent office is… Less than normal if these things can happen.

    • Ookami38
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      14
      ·
      2 months ago

      I’ve heard this a few times, but what does it ultimately mean? Doesn’t it mean that, if they desired, they could still operate and just not sell in Japan? Granted, obviously, if the dev is Japanese (I have no idea in this case and don’t feel like looking) then they’d have some issues, but for a western developer, it’d still be bad, losing all Japanese sales, but overall manageable.

      • ASDraptor@lemmy.autism.place
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        2 months ago

        I’m not a lawyer, so my knowledge is limited, but from what I understand, you can only make a claim for a patent infringement in the country where the company responsible for the infringement is located.

        So they have this patent in Japan, but if I make a Pokémon-like game but I’m from, say, France, where this patent doesn’t exist, Nintendo can only suck it up and cope, because they don’t have a patent for this in France.

          • Jrockwar@feddit.uk
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            2 months ago

            I’m not a lawyer but, I know when you file for a patent you can do that in just one country or internationally (which is significantly more expensive). Skimming through the Wikipedia article it seems to be talking about that, but first you need to have filed for the patent internationally and not in just one country.

            From what I’ve read about this topic, it sounds like this is a patent active in Japan only.

            • Kelly@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              2 months ago

              Oh! So that treaty somewhat standardizes PA patent rights across participating nations and allows a the patent office to act as a agent in procuring international patents but doesn’t actually offers a “globally” recognized patent in the way that the Berne Convention does for copyright.

              So it looks like the infamous loading screen minigame patent was only registered in Japan and the USA. If I have this right it would not have been a barrier to implementing a loading screen minigame anywhere else (e.g. PAL regions in their entirety)?

              https://patents.google.com/patent/US5718632