Forum - View topicNEWS: Nintendo Increases Amount of Money in Damages in Lawsuit Against Colopl
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Whitestrider
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I can only Imagine the patents involved in this litigation...
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TarsTarkas
 Posts: 5823 Location: Virginia, United States |
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Wish they had more details on the actual lawsuit. Can't really say anything, based on this article.
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Snowcat
Posts: 190 |
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Some details on the patents here.
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Whitestrider
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Cool...looks like the kind of patents that patent trolls would use against anyone just to get some money from them, |
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Cryten
 Posts: 987 |
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My questions, having viewed the described patents, are does everyone who shows a shadow through an object or creates a joystick on a touchscreen have to pay Nintendo royalties? Is this a Japanese only patent or worldwide?
My understanding of patents is that they do not protect idea's they only protect specific implementations of those idea's. |
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Tripple-A
 Posts: 383 Location: Hamburg, Germany |
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Thanks for the link. Seems like another case of bullshit "patents". None of the things described in this article seem like things you should even be able to get patented. They are just a bunch of common "ideas" and don't even have a particular way in how they are implemented. |
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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Patents like these would allow them to sue half the mobile games in existence, and they’re not asking for some minor payoff but ~$90 million USD. Software patents need to be abolished — copyright law already covers the really important stuff and there are just too many cases in programming where people necessarily need to do the same thing in the same way and can easily invent the same solutions without copying. If Coleco had been able to successfully patent and protect “a character moves laterally across the display and ascends or descends ladders when the player manipulates a control stick”, Donkey Kong and perhaps Nintendo as we know it wouldn’t exist. |
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Pandsu
 Posts: 186 |
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We, as a society, really need to update and reform our patent and copyright laws. This stuff is just way too outdated and restricting. It's ridiculous that a developer, no matter the size, has to basically pay someone to scour through filed patents and double check any basic feature the dev wants to implement.
Imaging you're a small indie startup and you have a basic platformer ready for release and then you get stopped at the door because as it turns out you have, say, a double-jump or wall-jump or mid-air attack in your game and someone patented that concept, saw a trailer for your game, and sent a C&D or something. |
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Tanteikingdomkey
 Posts: 2346 |
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wait so...why isn't nintendo suing half of all mobile game devs if these patients are so general then?
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Sven Viking
Posts: 1039 |
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For one thing a win will make it easier to win future cases — fighting a ton of cases simultaneously would cost a fortune and require more lawyers who might be less specialised, and this case alone has taken years already. There’s no guarantee they’ll win, and if they lost one case they’d be more likely to lose others they were fighting simultaneously. They don’t need to risk that — this way they can pull out if things go badly or ramp up if things go well.
For another thing it’s likely targeted at this particular company for strategic reasons. I haven’t checked it out myself, but a lot of people say it was related to their plans for Dragalia Lost which competes in a segment where Shironeko Project is apparently the market leader in Japan. Also it’s likely their long-term plan isn’t to become full-time patent trolls. If they took on half the mobile market, defendants would join forces against them, whether legally or materially or just by stirring up public opposition. If they strategically attack a few key rivals at a time it’s far less likely there’ll be a major backlash, and they can also apply softer pressure on smaller developers just from fear that they could potentially bring crippling legal action for use of common game mechanics. Last edited by Sven Viking on Thu Apr 22, 2021 9:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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gsilver
Posts: 616 |
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Alright, so Bowser is a troll?
Screw them. And software patents in general. |
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