The Palworld And Pokémon Lawsuit Took A Crazy Turn

Summary

This video, not by Magical Jill but her husband Jay, dives into the legal drama involving the game Pow World and Nintendo's Pokémon. Discussed in a casual and engaging manner, Jay outlines Pocket Pair's legal defense against Nintendo's lawsuit, suggesting Nintendo selectively enforces their patents to hinder competition, highlighting examples from other games that have not been legally challenged. Jay shares his disappointment in Nintendo's approach, emphasizing his passion for both Pokémon and healthy competition in gaming.

Highlights

• Nintendo's selective patent enforcement shows protectionism against competitors like Pocket Pair. 💼
• Examples of other games sharing mechanics with Pokémon, overlooked by Nintendo, fuel debate. 🔥
• Jay emphasizes the importance of fair competition to improve games, frustrated by Nintendo's tactics. 💥
• The video shares how broader gaming experiences influence Nintendo patent questions, highlighting gamer insights. 🎮
• Jay loves Pokémon but dislikes Nintendo's aggressive legal moves which stifle potential game innovations. ❤️

Key Takeaways

• Pocket Pair fights Nintendo's lawsuit over Pow World, suggesting selective patent enforcement. 🎮
• Jay critiques Nintendo's legal strategy, emphasizing healthy competition benefits. 🏆
• Jay shares insights and frustrations about the Pokémon monopoly on the creature capture market. 🛡️
• Example games like Titanfall and Ark show similar mechanics ignored by Nintendo legally. 🔍
• Nintendo's inconsistent patent enforcement hints at strategy to block competition rather than foster innovation. 🚫

Overview

In this lively video, Jay, while filling in for Magical Jill, tackles the intriguing legal battle between Nintendo's Pokémon and Pocket Pair's Pow World. The video takes a deep dive into Pocket Pair's defense, which argues Nintendo's selective enforcement of patents as a means to stifle competition.

Jay provides several examples from other games like Titanfall 2 and Ark: Survival Evolved to demonstrate how similar mechanics were ignored by Nintendo's legal team, suggesting a questionable motive behind targeting Pocket Pair. He critiques this legal strategy, advocating for fair play and pointing out the monopolistic hold Pokémon has on the creature capture market.

With a mix of passion and frustration, Jay shares his love for Pokémon while critiquing its parent company's approach to competition. He underscores the value of innovation and the potential harm of stifling competition through legal means, urging viewers to consider the broader implications of these corporate strategies on the gaming industry.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction by Jay In this chapter titled 'Introduction by Jay,' Jay, the husband of Magical Jill, introduces himself. He humorously comments on potential video edits by Jill and a minor mistake he made at the beginning. Jay mentions the focus of the video will be on Palworld and Pokémon and hints at the relevance of these topics despite not being directly on a gaming channel. He playfully advises viewers to check their throat health, suggesting a light-hearted tone.
• 00:30 - 02:00: Palworld and Pokémon Lawsuit Overview The chapter discusses a legal dispute involving Pocket Pair, the creators of Palworld, who are facing a lawsuit from Nintendo regarding similarities to Pokémon. The narrator, from the Magical Gill channel, finds the case intriguing, especially Pocket Pair's robust defense against Nintendo's claims, which was a perspective they had speculated on in previous discussions months prior.
• 02:00 - 04:00: Nintendo's Selective Patent Enforcement The chapter discusses Nintendo's approach to patent enforcement, specifically through the lens of gameplay mechanics. It highlights examples where Nintendo or Pokemon might have borrowed elements from others, which could potentially infringe on patents. The broader debate is touched upon, questioning the validity and necessity of patents for gameplay mechanics, a concept that some gamers and individuals find contentious or disagreeable. The narrative suggests a critical view of claiming patent infringement in game mechanics, analyzing the implications of strict enforcement policies in the gaming industry.
• 04:00 - 05:30: Influence and Inspiration in Gaming This chapter delves into the notion of influence and inspiration within the gaming industry, specifically focusing on the adaptation and use of game mechanics across different video games. It highlights the cases where companies like Nintendo, despite creating iconic mechanics, do not restrict other developers from implementing similar features in their games. The discussion also touches upon the strong fanbase and protective feelings players have towards games like Pokemon, and the criticisms directed at games perceived to have 'copied' elements from others.
• 05:30 - 10:00: Pocket Pair’s Legal Defense Strategy The chapter 'Pocket Pair’s Legal Defense Strategy' discusses how game developers often draw inspiration from existing games, using the example of Nintendo's Pokemon series. It is highlighted that Pokemon has openly borrowed game mechanics and elements from the Dragon Quest series, as admitted by previous developers. The discussion implies a common practice in the gaming industry where elements are adapted and innovated rather than created from scratch.
• 10:00 - 12:00: Nintendo's Market Position and Strategy In this chapter, the discussion revolves around Nintendo's approach to market competition and its strategic positioning. A key point highlighted is the company's enforcement of its copyrights or patents. The chapter illustrates the complexity when a company targets a competitor for imitation while possibly ignoring others doing similar things. This selective enforcement could lead to legal complications, providing the singled-out company with a strong legal argument of being unfairly targeted. The chapter delves into Nintendo's decisions on how and when to enforce such rights, impacting their market strategy and legal approach.
• 12:00 - 14:30: Conclusion and Call for Viewer Opinions In this chapter, the host discusses the current state of the Pokemon series and expresses skepticism towards criticisms that may be driven by personal bias rather than genuine concerns. They reference Pocket Bear's examples, which are set to be reviewed, indicating potential flaws or changes in the series. The host also asks viewers for their opinions, indicating a transition to a community discussion. Despite their criticisms, the host conveys a personal attachment to Pokemon, noting a perceived decline in effort from the developers, Game Freak.

The Palworld And Pokémon Lawsuit Took A Crazy Turn Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 Hello everybody. I am not Magical Jill, but I am Jill's husband, Jay, who is in a lot of these videos, and occasionally I'm let off the leash to make my own video. I'm sure Jill will edit it, and I just kicked my foot, so this is a bad start. But today, we're talking a little bit more about Palworld and Pokémon. You might wonder, why isn't this on one of your gaming channels? Well, you should probably get your throat checked out. That sounds like you're sick. But I will say that when it comes to Pokémon, it is something we do want to cover on this
• 00:30 - 01:00 channel, Magical Gill, where we talk a little bit more about anime and stuff like that. Unfortunately, we just haven't had a lot of time to do so. But this the Pocket Pair lawsuit with PAWorld and Nintendo with Pokémon is kind of interesting to me. So, it's something I wanted to talk about for a couple minutes because basically Pocket Pair, who made Pow World, has made a pretty strong legal defense and argument against Nintendo's lawsuit. And it's one that I think we brought up months ago when we covered this, that there were
• 01:00 - 01:30 all these examples of things that either Pokemon borrowed from, which they didn't even go for that angle, but also that if they were going to operate by this standard of, hey, you know, you're infringing on this copyright, or I'm sorry, you're infringing on this uh patent, right, for a gameplay mechanic, which I think a lot of gamers still don't think should exist, patents for mechanics. But we kind of argued that, you know, one statement they could make is if you're going to argue, hey, you
• 01:30 - 02:00 can't do this, you can't do this, you can't do this because we developed these mechanics, no one else can touch them, then why are there other examples of people touching them, right? Why are there other examples of people using similar mechanics and actually Nintendo doesn't care? You know, it's kind of interesting because I I understand the wanting to defend Pokemon to an extent because whenever we talk about this, there's a lot of people who love Pokemon who kind of come out of the woodwork and they're like, "This copied this, this
• 02:00 - 02:30 copied this." My thing has always been that, as you can see in our previous video from probably about 6 months ago, so I won't regurgitate all those examples. There are a lot of things that Nintendo for Pokemon did borrow from and even has just straight up said they were directly inspired from like Dragon Quest. They admitted word for word in the past developers admitted that they were inspired by Dragon Quest and some of the mechanics and things from that. So then it's one of those things where you're looking at you're looking at Pokemon borrowing things and making them
• 02:30 - 03:00 their own, but then they're going after a competitor that's borrowing things and making them their own. You know, that was always kind of our point. But also the fact that when you have a copyright or a patent or whatever, if you just selectively enforce it, like if you have 20 people who are doing a similar thing and you go after one cuz you don't like them, well, that one now has a strong legal precedent to say they're being singled out and that you don't actually
• 03:00 - 03:30 care about this. You're just going after them cuz you don't like them. And that kind of seems to be the angle that Pocket Bear is taking by giving all these examples which we're going to go through for a couple minutes. But I did have a question of the day for you, which is genuinely what do you think about all of this just in general? For me, I'm sure you'll get my thoughts out of it. I think that Pokemon is a series I still care about. I think it used to be better. I think that more effort used to go into it and Game Freak used to be
• 03:30 - 04:00 given more time. And so for me, when this pocket pair thing happened, like when they came out and they made what was it, Crafttopia, I believe, and then they went on to do POW World, I thought, cool, this is competition. You know, this is what capitalism was based off of. It's got a lot of problems. But one of the positives of capitalism was supposed to be that if Tom and Andrew are both making similar products that they're both going to want to make the best product they can because they don't
• 04:00 - 04:30 want the other one to get the upper hand and take the whole market, right? Well, when it comes to creature capture games, Nintendo has had the majority of the market and pretty much just kind of a almost monopoly on the idea for a very long time. There have been other things that have popped up. Obviously, Digimon never caught on as much as Pokemon did. There have been things like Monster Rancher, which I think had some mechanics that blew Pokemon out of the water actually for the era that it came out in, even though Pokemon was still
• 04:30 - 05:00 amazing in that era. But in general, like a lot of times, nothing caught on as much as Pokémon. And I think that actually goes to show how special Pokemon is as well. But then when something was catching on as much as Pokemon and they went after it right away, it just I don't know. It kind of it kind of frustrates me. So, we're like we're taking a look at a couple of different uh articles. I was going to say rants cuz that's what I'm on. One from Game Rant, one as well from Insider Gaming, and one of course as well from
• 05:00 - 05:30 Windows Central. So, I will link those in the description down below, but I will be interested to hear what you think. Also, really quick, I did want to say that we are going to be at a couple of conventions coming up soon. Jill, I'm sure when she edits this, can show the pictures of those. They are both in Oaklair, Wisconsin, where we will be selling our stuff from Cosmo Bunny Shop, our store, where we actually take manga, magazines, comic book paper, etc. Paper that is damaged, books that are damaged, they're unable to be sold, so they're
• 05:30 - 06:00 sold either dirt cheap on clearance or they're given to us. What we do is we take those damaged books, we give some of that paper and art new life, transforming it into something new through a new medium into coasters, keychains, trays, and more, and we recycle the rest. So, we'll be at those things. I'll talk a little bit more about it at the end, but regardless, this entire situation has left me frustrated. Now, Game Rant summary of this is essentially that Pocket Pair responded to the lawsuit with two different stages. First off, they argued
• 06:00 - 06:30 both invalidity and non-infringement in in terms of the patent lawsuit itself, but the non-infringement arguments essentially will only come into play if Pocket Pair fails to successfully argue that Nintendo's patents at the center of the lawsuit are invalid. Now, something that a lot of you brought up in the comments in the past was that when it comes down to it, there was a there's been a situation for a long time where in the Japanese economy, Nintendo is kind of like Disney, they have a very strong and
• 06:30 - 07:00 favorable standing. So, when they ask for something, a lot of times they get it. Uh Nintendo does not have that favoritism in America. It might have it with some fans, but it doesn't get it from, you know, just average everyday people. Same with a lot of other territories. So, that's why it really depends on where they take this. But the thing is, this is in Japan right now. So, that's kind of where they're fighting an uphill battle. It would be kind of like fighting a battle against Disney in their home state, like
• 07:00 - 07:30 regarding one of their regarding one of their theme parks. They have a pretty big foot in the door. And even though the legal system is not supposed to work this way, there is a lot of nepotism. There is a lot of who you know and there is a lot of good graces given to some people who I guess they would say have earned them even if they shouldn't have. Now what's interesting is essentially what's going on with this lawsuit is Pocket Pair in the Tokyo District Court is actually going after the three
• 07:30 - 08:00 patents and saying that they're invalid, that they don't really, you know, essentially that they are invalid. I'm not a legal expert, so we're going to break this down the best we can. But with one of the patents, which describes a system for capturing creatures and releasing creatures into battle, Pocket Pair argued that none of its elements were new at the time of its late 2021 filing. The company used its prior game, Crafttopia, to illustrate the claim, arguing that while it doesn't do everything Nintendo's patent describes,
• 08:00 - 08:30 it could easily be combined with features from other existing games to arrive at the same result. They cited games like Titanfall 2, Far Cry 5, Tomb Raider, and Octopath Traveler among prior titles whose systems overlap with this patent. But none of these ones were targeted by Nintendo, right, for a lawsuit. And that's their point is now wait a minute. You've already not cared about this patent. You have let this patent go. There have been all of these different games at least 1 2 3 4 to five
• 08:30 - 09:00 major AAA games. Poor Titanfall 2 on here cuz uh that game is one of my favorite shooter campaigns I've ever played and it did not get the recognition it deserved. But it's finally getting it in this lawsuit. Suck it EA. It's unfortunate though because they basically pointed out that, you know, you didn't go after any of these. In regards to other patents though, they made a similar claim to patent JP74. I'm not going to read that whole thing,
• 09:00 - 09:30 which essentially describes a system for aiming a capture item and calculating creature capture chances. They actually pointed out the Dark Souls 3 mod, Pocket Souls, which some of you are going to say, "Well, no, wait a minute. A mod? That's not official." But it went viral, you know, like everybody knows about it. They didn't take it down. They didn't do anything like that, which allows players to capture enemies and use them against one another. I'm going to be pissed if they take this mod down, by the way. Uh, Pocket Pair also said that combining its ideas with Crafttopia, the Fallout 4 mod
• 09:30 - 10:00 Nukeon, which is very clearly inspired by Pokemon, it's even got man in it, Monster Super League or Nexommon would have literally been enough to arrive at the mechanics similar to those in PAW World. And then the final part of their defense is aimed at another patent which is JP75 blah blah blah ending in 90 which describes a system for switching ridable objects such as pals or Pokémon on the fly. Here pocket pair pointed to
• 10:00 - 10:30 Ark. You know you got Ark Survival Evolved and stuff like that as an obvious case of prior art that doesn't even need to be combined with anything else and Nintendo never went after it. So there's all these existing arts already that do these things. And actually, somebody even pointed out in the comments before, what about like World of Warcraft? I mean, how many games have ridable mounts? I can actually even think of another game right now that violated this um violated this patent right now. If this patent is legit, Assassin's Creed Shadows, I was
• 10:30 - 11:00 recently playing. It's nothing to do with this channel, but it does have to do with this lawsuit. One thing you can do is on the fly switch out your ridable mount. You can be riding on a dragon, then you go into a menu, click, and you're now able to summon a horse or you're now able to summon a different breed of horse. That right there, how does that not go against this Nintendo thing, right? This patent. Well, I can tell you in my opinion why it doesn't because it's not competition, right? Because Nintendo doesn't care about
• 11:00 - 11:30 Assassin's Creed because they don't think they're going to lose any of their Pokemon players to Assassin's Creed. They see it as a totally different game. They don't think they're going to lose Pokemon players to a Fallout 4 mod because they don't release Pokemon games on PC anyway. So, they don't they don't care. They don't care about that market. They've never cared about that market. Um, as you know, time goes on, I'm sure that they eventually will, but right now they don't care about that market. So, they don't think we're going to lose PC players cuz they already don't have PC
• 11:30 - 12:00 players. They don't care about that. What this comes down to is we've been making our Pokemon games as quickly as possible to maximize our revenue. It's worked for revenue, but it's pissed off a lot of people who if you give them the option of something better will leave. So, when something comes up that a lot of people took as better, that people took as this is going to compete with Pokemon and force Pokemon to be better, instead of competing, it was easier to file a lawsuit. That's my genuine
• 12:00 - 12:30 opinion on this. That's what Pocket Bear is pointing out, too. And I also think as well, even though this would be an entirely different defense, and I don't it's probably not worth it because then you'd have to go back and start challenging Pokemon's own mechanics and patents based off of previous works they don't own. So, I don't think they can do that. But when I'm looking at this, like I said in the beginning, even outside of all of this, what pisses me off is the fact that Pokemon developers in the past
• 12:30 - 13:00 admitted that they took stuff from other games. Like, oh, this was such a great idea. We were inspired by this. We were inspired by old um, you know, things like Dragon Quest, like Dragon Quest 2, I believe, was a huge inspiration. Hell, even uh Jill, you know what? When you're editing this, show some of the pictures of comparisons of some of these monsters. They're not all one to one, but there are monsters from old Dragon Quest that very, very clearly were borderline stolen in my opinion for Pokemon. Like, they were just taken, reworked a little bit, and then they were put in there, right? Like, oh,
• 13:00 - 13:30 well, I really like this monster. Let's make a let's make a legally distinct version of it. Like, if instead of making Spider-Man, I made Spanman, you know? It's like it's not Spider-Man, but you know what it's supposed to be, right? You know why I did that. Well, it's okay for Nintendo to do that, but nobody else to do it to them. And that to me is where this is frustrating is I think that this legal defense is pretty good. I mean, you're basically pointing out how about all these other wide high-profile examples, some are
• 13:30 - 14:00 official AAA games, some are smaller games, some are mods that went viral that there's no way you didn't know about because you have to be tapped into that industry as part of it. And none of those you went against. None of them you ever went against. and even pointing out again that a lot of them in the realms that they don't necessarily operate in as much like PC, they very clearly just let it go and didn't care because they don't feel like they're going to lose anyone there. I just at the end of the day want
• 14:00 - 14:30 both of these franchises to be good. I like Palworld. I think it's very cool, but it's not it's not iconic like Pokémon was to me. You know, Pokémon is like it's got decades of iconography, interesting lore, story. I truly think that up through the end of the 3DS era with a couple of misses, it was mostly hits all the way through the end of that. When we got to Switch, we started getting to these faster and faster um turnarounds that I think led
• 14:30 - 15:00 to the games being worse. And I think that it's sad that to me what this looks like is instead of competing to make your game better, it was easier to be lazy and send some lawyers to sue someone. I just I don't know that really disappoints me. It comes off as immature and I would expect I I don't expect better from Nintendo because they do this to a lot of things like legal action when it's unnecessary. But I think wasting court and judges times uh
• 15:00 - 15:30 you know wielding the law like a cudgel selectively where you're going after certain things because that thing could compete with you but something else couldn't. These are the kinds of things that I think laws should work against. You know, like I think if you file these frivolous lawsuits that are very clearly in your favor to do e, you know, based on competition, I think there should be some kind of retaliation for that in the court system. You know, I don't think
• 15:30 - 16:00 people should be able to do this kind of thing. Let me know what you think in the comments down below, though. It frustrates me, but um my frustration will not change anything. So, interested to hear your thoughts. If you enjoyed the video, you want to leave a like, subscribe. We appreciate that very, very much. We have ways to support our channel, like our Fortnite code, DJAY123. And I will say one last time, I'm a big fan of Pokemon. I know that Pokemon fan 3725 who got pissed that there's any criticism of it won't care or listen to this point, but I love Pokémon. I think it's amazing. It's one
• 16:00 - 16:30 of my favorite RPG series of all time. Uh to the point where before Jill wanted to cover it on this channel, I wanted to put it on my channel, JRPG, and we actually got into like a a small argument about where it belonged. like, "No, no, it should be on my channel. No, damn it. I like it." And uh I think that I think that people get the idea when you talk about something like this that you don't like the thing. No, I like Pokemon and I like a lot of the artists and devs who work on it, but I don't like the bureaucracy above it. And I don't like the way Nintendo is
• 16:30 - 17:00 selectively, in my opinion, wielding the law like kind of a hammer to beat people over the head with it. And and I I truly believe they've been doing this for many years, many decades even. And I think at some point it does have to end and there has to be some retaliation in the courts that basically says, "Hey, f around and find out. Keep, you know, going after people frivolously and we won't take any of your lawsuits seriously anymore." But unfortunately, that's not how the world works. People get a billion chances. So, let me know if you enjoyed this video.
• 17:00 - 17:30 Uh, you know, you can also support us through Cosmo Bunny Shop. I already mentioned that. Coasters, keychains, trays, and more from recycled paper. Appreciate you very much. Have a fantastic day. And as always everyone A schwe. [Music]