925
Palworld maker vows to fight Nintendo lawsuit on behalf of fans and indie developers
(www.eurogamer.net)
this post was submitted on 19 Sep 2024
925 points (97.4% liked)
Technology
59589 readers
3024 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Off to a great start, I see. I know that actual game mechanics cannot be patented or copyrighted (the same principle applies to non digital games), so I'm really curious to what these patents are.
You’ve mixed copyright and patents together and confused yourself a bit. Game mechanics cannot be copyrighted, but they can be patented. Some game component designs can be copyrighted as well, and even trademarked.
There are many, many, many game mechanics and features which have been patented, such as in-game chat, minigames on loading screens, arrow pointing to destination, and so on. Game studios have to license those features from the patent holders if they wish to use them.
Some random company even owns a patent for the concept of sending and receiving email on a mobile device. The entire system is a fucking joke.
There is an era of patents from the late 90s through the early-mid-00s that were insanely vague and rarely stand up to scrutiny, but most are expiring at this point, if they haven't already. Generally, though, patents are not granted on "concepts" but on implementations. That's a sometimes ambiguous line, but that's a fundamental principle of modern patents.