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Palworld confirms ‘disappointing’ game changes forced by Pokémon lawsuit
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 08 May 2025
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Copyright and patent laws need to die.
Victims of Stockholm Syndrome always focus on what their abusers provide, but never what they take away.
This is such an extremely naive thing to say.
Do you enjoy having every good, innovative US or EU product die immediately due to China/India making a 1:1 copy and flooding the markets with it?
Enjoy innovative products that startups create? How about not having any of that because as soon as a startup makes something, a big corp comes in with their money, steals the idea, and floods the market?
EDIT: no arguments, just downvotes? Damn, I thought this place was supposed to be better than Reddit...
Chinese companies famously ignore patent law and do make copies and try to flood the western market with them.
Most startups don't have the time and/or money to patent their ideas and big corps do squash them/steal their ideas routinely once they become noticeable.
If anything, startups can't develop their ideas because some company will hold a generic patent like "clicking a button does something" (or "glide with a pet") from 30 years ago.
But western companies at least have a tool to fight back or limit the flood.
Ah, the usual "if the solution is not absolutely 100% perfect, let's throw out the solution". Come on...
Yeah, this happens all of once every billion times. Clearly the system is stupid and needs to be killed so that nobody who isn't extremely rich can actually develop anything new without being immediately put out to pasture.
I just wanna know which amazing video game innovations We are protecting here in America. Are we talking about the failing franchises that have been milking their customers for 15 years? Have we done anything really innovative recently? Remakes delayed games and flops.
First, I'm not talking specifically about America. Second, I'm not talking about "amazing innovations". Copyright is also for trademarks, very characteristic gameplay mechanics, etc. For example, Playrix made "Fishdom" which was copy-paste Worms. Team17 won the case and protected their IP.
Umm... No? What does that have to do with copyright or IP protection...?
Have you tried looking at titles from other publishers than Ubisoft, EA or Activition?
Eh it's all just stolen and borrowed code. Whens the next Dawn of war or command and conquer coming out? Oh never. locked behind IP laws and timid corpos.
Got proof? Go and win the easiest lawsuit of your life.
The Nemesis system, which we just sit on and don't do anything with.
Yes, US companies have a lot of IP conflicts with China and we do tend to hear about them through media. But that paints a skewed picture of what's actually happening.
If you were to research it more carefully, you would find out that the vast majority of these claims (>90%) are not pursued by US companies. As a deliberate, strategic decision. They don't want to.
Ask yourself why.
Don't believe me? Google is your friend.
I don't care where the company making the claim is from, as long as it acquired the IP legally and has a valid claim for protecting it.
The way the patent system works is bad in many, many, MANY ways, but saying "copyright and patent laws need to die" is just idiotic. As it is, we at least have a semblance of rules. Without it, it's just "whoever can reproduce and mass produce a promising product faster". And that means: China because they already make everything.
You would be correct if that is how the copyright and trademark system actually worked.
But they don't. They favour the big guy, not the little guy. Crazy, I know. Wait until you find out how modern taxation systems work.
That's the US law system, not the IP system in general.
There are examples of smaller companies managing to protect their IP (Finjan vs Symantec, Unwired Planet vs. Huawei, Neo Wireless vs. Sony, etc., etc - that's just from a quick search).
I'm not saying that the copyright system in place is perfect, but saying "copyright and patent laws need to die" is just delusional.
Patents have an expiry for a reason and the expiry date is pretty generous IMO. It's thought as "Startup x can invent and make money off it but after it the market should take over so further improvements can be made." Imagine if they patented CRISPR Cas9 or the first DNA sequencing method. It would limit science for the entire time of the expiry but not after.
Claiming invention patent for the pokeballs more than 20 years after the game came out is absurd. They can keep the brand, trademark and IP for their weirdly long time but innovations should become public so the market can continue innovating.
Then go back to reddit? You are daft as fuck defending this crap. Nintendo patenting game mechanics shouldn't be a thing.
Fuck Nintendo and its supporters.
How about you come back to me when you can read?
I'm not defending Nintendo, I'm saying that "copyright and patent laws need to die" stance is naive.
You clearly can't read. Enjoy those downvotes for being a moron.
I don't think patents and copyright "need to die", but they are currently both overly broad and last far too long. Copyright protection especially has no justifiable reason to be even 1/4 as long as it is.
Do we enjoy the premise of capitalism where businesses compete to make the best and cheapest product for the consumer?
Yes. Yes we did up until a few months ago.
A few months ago?! lol sure ok.
We are getting cheap but we are not getting anywhere close to best and it’s been that way for at least a decade.
WTF are you talking about??
I'm talking about 70$ games man. Im talking about IP being locked away for decades. Genres of games dying off to push profitability of bigger projects. Strangling out smaller studios any way possible. I'm talking about Gamers. They came for GAMERS.
You're talking nonsense, is what you're talking about.
What does a genre drying up have to do with IP or copyright? Like, are you even reading your own words?
Supergiant Games, CDPR, Larian, Sandfall Interactive and every single indie creator out there clearly haven't been informed of how horrible their situation is. Maybe you should contact them and let them know that the 10/10 games they've been making are impossible to make due to copyright and IP protection laws?
Also was loosly talking about my increased business costs associated with china tariffs. Let the chinese steal shit and make it cheap for me thats what im talking abou.
If it's a perfect 1:1 copy why does it matter? Can you explain how this isn't just a stance rooted in xenophobia?
You just described the dream of most startups. The goal of the vast majority is to be acquired by a big corp so that their idea/product can continue growing, because without acquisition growth is severely limited.
First of all: very often it's literally a 1:1 copy.
Secondly: imagine you make an innovative product. I don't know, automatic fence painter, whatever. It sells well, but you don't have the money to start a large-scale production, you're doing OK with sales and are looking for investors, but things are fairly slow. In comes a Chinese dude, buys one auto-painter from you, brings it home, dismantles the thing, copies everything (potentially making some changes), and starts a massive-scale production in his factory. Due to the mass-production, worse materials, and lower labour costs, he sells the product at 20% the price of yours. The market is saturated with his knock-off, you're left with zero money.
Is this xenophobia to you? Or someone stealing your product and killing your business?
Yeah, I'm not talking about them being acquired. What gave you that idea? I specifically used the words "steals their idea".
Do you know why there doesn't exist automated fencepost painters? As bad as this sort of stuff is in software world it's soooo much worse in hardware world. The licensing fees for every single little piece of IP that go into it would nickel and dime even large businesses out of building anything like that. Sure there's also technical difficulties with building one, but those are surmountable. However, a business model that could survive the constant threats of litigation, licensing fees and turn even a mild profit does not exist.
Yes, because you just described what businesses throughout the Western world do to your mythical small business and projected it onto some mythical far east.
You do realize that is the point of IP right? To allow legalized theft in this exact manner? In the exact article this comment chain is discussing palworld did their due diligence to verify they weren't violating any of Nintendo's IP and then Nintendo modified their patent filing so that they were with the express goal of stealing their product.
I'm just impressed that you managed to miss the point by so much.
Correct. Which is precisely why copyright law was established in the first place and why companies like Facebook, Google or Amazon were able to become what they were without Microsoft or Apple just copy-pasting what they did.
The copyright laws are not perfect, far from it. But they give smaller companies SOME form of defence against the corps.
Do you also believe that OSHA was created to control the poor employee into submission by their great corporate overlord?
Yes, like I said: the copyright laws are not perfect. But saying that it would better WITHOUT ANY COPYRIGHT LAWS is insanity.
Microsoft did copy and paste though: Yammer, Bing and Azure respectively. Apple tried with Ping/eWorld, Safari/Spotlight but didn't really get into the web host space. Also worth mentioning the duopoly nature of those 2 specifically.
Rather telling that all your examples are Fortune 500 companies?
That's a rather impressive hay golem you've built there.
We're not talking copyright laws, we're talking patent laws and you have yet to explain why it would be insane without changing scope or inventing fanciful scenarios.
So, you fully and honestly believe that Microsoft has stolen Google's and Amazon's code? As in: you're 100% certain that's the case here?
No. It's not worth mentioning in a topic that has nothing to do with that fact...
It amazes me how you see a company NOW being a Fortune 500, and going "waagh, IP protection only serves the massive corpos!!!" without realising how many of those companies became Fortune 500 thanks to those protections.
It equally amazes me how you see the law being used by said companies most of the time (because, you know, they're larger) and go "we can do without these laws" without blinking an eye, or a single neuron firing towards the thought that... these laws ALSO serve the smaller companies.
Mate, are you lost or something?
This is what my reply was to:
Do I need to put "copyright" in bold here?
Does a patent protect the concept or the specific code? You seemed pretty adamant that reverse engineering was theft previously, and assuming you haven't changed your definition of theft then yes, according to your definition of theft I'm 100% certain that's the case.
Thanks to those, or in spite of? You are focusing on outliers and expecting that to be a convincing argument to describe the typical.
Just because they can, doesn't mean it's something to expect. There are orders of magnitude between how often they protect, and how often the destroy. You a big lottery fan or something?
Fair, I was attempting to limit scope with only discussing patents and not getting into the rest of the weeds and didn't properly communicate that. I had assumed there would be more than a single neuron between the two of us, but that was clearly presumptive of me.
Depends on the patent.
It's not "my definition of theft", it's "theft". If you're 100% certain, hit Amazon lawyers up, I'm sure they'll love to talk to you about it - it's literally free money for them and maybe a big payout for you, right?
The hilarious thing is that you're like so many other "revolutionaries" who come in and go: "oh no, the X rules are stifling the market/competition/free exchange of information/whatever" while being completely ignorant on how these rules came to be.
It's like these capitalists of today saying that OSHA needs to go because they're losing profits to it, completely oblivious to the fact that it was the capitalists of the XIX century who created them to increase profits (because having to replace skilled labourers became a high cost factor).
You strike me as someone who thinks that copyright and other IP protection laws are something that was set up in XX (maybe XIX) century as a means to protect the wealthy. Am I wrong?
Right. So when I refused to change the scope, you decided to call me an idiot. How very gentlemanly of you.
Not how that works, stop talking out of your ass (Gottschalk v. Benson)
You keep switching between moral and legal arguments. They are not the same.
Deflection
Strawman
Literally mirroring your words back at you
It's exactly how it works. You can patent the code, the solution, the material, whatever the fuck you want. That's what a patent IS.
Oh, do elaborate!
Example of a similar thought-process.
Huh? That wasn't an argument, mate, that was an assumption and a question. Are you OK?
I still kinda' hope I'd get an answer, though.
Well, not "literally" and not quite "mirroring". I think you need some rest, mate, you seem tired and unfocused.