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Comment by program_whiz | Hacker News Reader

To me this is the clearest case of using lawfare to try and suppress honest competition. Yes Palworld borrows some creative ideas from pokemon, but it so clearly a different game there's no question to it (if that's not different enough, then what is?).

In this case, I think Nintendo realizes their biggest cash-cow is pokemon so they _have_ to make a play to suppress any competition. However, this is very bad for the market imo and should be disincentivized somehow.

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If they succeed, imagine the chilling effect to game makers who have to pause and think "if I succeed, will I be destroyed because my idea shares some commonalities with other games?"

Yeah,this would be grim because this is how genres are born.

I wouldn't call it the clearest case of lawfare, any reasonable person can look at these designs and see that it's copying the core design:

https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2024/01/26/20-1706294568231.p... https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2024/01/26/21-1706294568232.p... https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2024/01/26/22-1706294568233.p... https://assets-prd.ignimgs.com/2024/01/26/28-1706294568242.p...

It does look bad, but this is about the core design of the creatures, not the gameplay. I think we should be concerned if this meant making a game clone like how first-person shooters originated as "Doom-clones" was off the table.

The creatures are the biggest part of the Pokémon IP. You don't sell plushies and merch of the gameplay.

The entire lawfare approach thus far has been via patent dispute from what I understand, so the gameplay is actually what's being argued.

could you imagine a world where only the first company to develop a game mechanic is allowed to use that mechanic in their games?

That would make games like iphones, only the smallest change allowed between each generation, Atari would rule the game universe, the kids would be playing jumpman in 4k resolution (Now with 256 colors and 12 unique levels!)

From what I understand their lawfare approach is using japanese software patent law, they have notably not tried to do the same using trademark or copyright infringement.

If they could get away with what you're suggesting, I imagine they would have tried it on digimon decades ago: https://digi-battle.com/Content/CardScans/CP-22.png vs https://archives.bulbagarden.net/media/upload/e/ed/0098Krabb...

There's a laundry list of these comparisons actually https://preview.redd.it/what-if-digimon-adventure-was-pokemo...

No one is looking at Digimon and going "Hey, that's Pokemon!" -- looking at Palworld's creatures for the uninitiated, it looks so very much like Pokemon creatures that most people I know have confused it for Pokemon.

There's a HUGE difference between being influenced by, and blatantly copying the inspiration and design. It took Nintendo decades to come up with creature designs, and Palworld less than a year - and they could do that because they likely went through each creature one-by-one and said, "How can we make it just so slightly different?"

No one is looking at Digimon and saying it looks like Pokemon now, but in the 90s they sure as heck were. People's mothers (ie the key demographic for "the uninitiated") commonly confused one for the other, even the TV show. This is no longer the case purely because Digimon is far less popular.

Bearing in mind pretty much all Pokemon designs follow the rule of "what if a mythical animal existed in our art style", it is in fact shockingly easy to accidentally ape a Pokemon design just by cartoonifying mythos.

This is incidentally also true of Pokemon, who were accused of ripping off Dragon Quest when the first games started coming out. Does anyone remember that at this point?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GEYrZuzXUAAjpkB?format=jpg&name=...

Agree the creatures look similar but that isn't at issue in the case, it's gameplay mechanics (catching creatures and then using them to battle).

Similarity in design is not necessarily infringement. Invincible is obviously based on the DC comics universe, with Omni-Man very similar to Superman both in appearance and background, and there are basically one-to-one equivalents of most of the Justice League (e.g. Darkwing for Batman). Yet that doesn't mean it infringes on DC's IP.

At this point Marvel and DC actually need each other in order to have a comic book market. The more readers you get at Marvel, the more potential ones you would get in DC (because they cover different social issues) and vice versa.

Invincible is actually published by Image Comics.

They probably took some inspiration but you also could argue that there's so many Pokémon nowadays that you can't create any creature from scratch which would not look like any of them.

And some of them in the Pokémon world aren't really that inspired either...

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