“The analysis states that only three (patents) - one from the first group and two from the second - were registered before Palworld’s release. That suggests that Nintendo could have played Palworld, identified any similarities, and then focused in on specific areas in order to increase the strength of its claim.”
“The volume of patents that the company owns means that it has the right to pick and choose which ones it wants to enforce at a given time, and having essentially given up on attempting to enforce any copyright claims, it’s made the decision to go after Pocketpair because “it felt threatened” by Palworld’s expansion.”
Gamesradar-
It’s still so crazy to me that nobody thought to allow a player to ride on an animal as a means of transportation in video games until 2022. (Fuck Nintendo, and fuck how abusable patent law is.)
World of Warcraft?
Even crazier, it sounds like no other dev can ever think to allow players to ride an animal again? Don’t want to risk Nintendo panties getting bunched up. Yeah, definitely a good use of the patent system.
This would never stand up in the US (or Canada or Europe…) as prior art would completely invalidate the patent. But the Japanese patent system is it’s own opaque legal monster.
There’s not enough case details released yet. Maybe they’ll have something more substantial to show.
You can ride a dragon in Skyrim
I can think of a few games where this is possible which came out long before 2022.