this post was submitted on 20 May 2026
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Counterpoint: Summoning characters by throwing an item and having the character appear at the position of the item has been patented by Nintendo, as has using a summoned character as a hang glider.
Japanese patent law is pretty terrible.
Its less terrible than you think, Nintendo has been suffering setback after setback in the totality of their legal battle with PalWorld, in both Japan and the US.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/technology/amid-palworld-lawsuit-nintendo-tries-and-fails-to-secure-new-patent-on-monster-capturing-mechanics/ar-AA23uWgi
https://www.eurogamer.net/nintendos-palworld-lawsuit-suffers-another-potential-blow-as-us-takes-rare-step-of-re-examining-previously-granted-pokemon-patent
https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2025/11/it-is-ever-more-likely-that-nintendo-will-lose-firm-faces-another-setback-in-battle-against-palworld
Basically... both the US and Japanese versions of the patent battles are having things like... Japan just actually rejects a Nintendo patent as being too vague and non novel... the USPTO does a thing it almost never does and re-reviews a patent it had previously given to Nintendo as possibly being vague bullshit as well... Niintendo just completely rewrites the lawsuit in the middle of pre-trial, while also claiming violations of patents that it filed for after the lawsuit started.
...thats actually largely a bunch of bullshit, that has a decent likelihood of pissing off the judges and arbiters involved as essentially being legal misconduct.
Good to hear, although the mere presence of a bullshit lawsuit can do a lot of damage to a smaller company.
The problem remains, however, that the patents in question were granted in the first place, as were the retroactive addenda (which is a terrible "feature" of Japanese patent law).
Game mechanics are patentable both in principle and in practice. And that's a problem.
Well sure if you wanna take the angle that game mechanics being patentable is in and of itself a problem then... yeah, ok.
What is anybody gonna do about that?
Best case scenario I can possibly think of is... maybe if SKG remains an actual political entity and score some actual wins, maybe something like 5 years down the line they could draw up draft reforms for patent and copyright laws, but...
... even just assuming that you could come up with a new framework that people would actually well understand and also broadly support... not gonna be easy to balance the idea of a small upstart trying to secure a wedge of a market, vs a giant megacorp that owns all neat ideas...
...that would be an even more insane battle than going up against just video game companies.
At that point, you'd be taking on essentially all of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet.
People have been arguing for reforming the DMCA for decades, its never gone anywhere.
It is barely realistically concievable to me that anything could actually be done about this.
Those are litigation & therefore in an indeterminate state. They have lost recently within Japanese law just this week on their touchscreens.
Also, IANAL. Nothing I say should be considered formal legal advice.