The lawsuit came as a surprise, and led the developer to "hire security guards" for its Tokyo Game Show presence.
  • onlinepersona@programming.devEnglish
    472·
    3 days ago

    Nintendo had registered the patents in a filing not long after Palworld’s release, setting the stage for the lawsuit.

    How is that even legal? Decades after releasing something, a competitor comes along and releases their product, so you decide “now’s the time to file a patent” and you can kill the competitor. That should create a very unstable business environment as no new business can be safe when making a patent check as they can be filed after you created a product by somebody else. It makes no sense.

    Anti Commercial-AI license

    • Bronzebeard@lemm.eeEnglish
      30·
      3 days ago

      I was just thinking this. Japan’s patent system is so fucked up. You can do everything right, look up all relevant existing patents to make sure you’re in the clear, then a competitor ex post facto files and kills your business.

    • bruce965@lemmy.mlEnglish
      14·
      3 days ago

      I didn’t downvote, but I found it quite unclear and vague.

      Nintendo announced the lawsuit […] we were just about to go to Tokyo Game Show, so obviously we had to scale back a little bit and hire security guards and stuff like that."

      I don’t follow the connection… Why do you need security guards in response to a lawsuit?

      • Malix@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        271·
        3 days ago

        Just a hunch, but have you seen how rabid some nintendo -fans are? If a word of the lawsuit got out some whacko’s could try something. Ref. “Zelda-game got only 8/10? Send death threats to reviewer.” mentality.

        • bruce965@lemmy.mlEnglish
          51·
          3 days ago

          Okay, that makes sense 😅

          Well, I guess I am not informed on such details. Maybe one of the people downvoting were in my same situation. Although I guess this kind of websites expect their visitors to already know about the context.