Regardless of whether their claim is correct or not, 10 million Yen is actually much lower than I expected.
That’s equivalent of around £50,600 GBP.
I’d say Big N knows they have nothing and want to avoid Pocket Pair fighting back. If they pay, they can just keep using the patents to scare off competition. While it’s probably not a lot for Palworld, which blew up, it may be too much for rising indie devs, that N could then target much faster to nip their games in the bud.
EDIT: x.com
Seems to me it’s more about shutting down Palworld than making any money from doing so. Cause it’s not like Palworld can just pay that amount and carry on as normal. I don’t think at least, I’m not a lawyer. I imagine if they simply agreed to pay what is being asked, they’re also admitting to patent infringement and would then have to make fundamental changes to their game, or shut it down altogether.
They can also use the patent under licence - it’s how Qualcomm makes ARM chips for example, ARM sells licences.
However I really hope they fight Nintendo and beat them in court - it’s funny they’ve only filed this in Japan as in the US, UK and EU there have been a few patent lawyers who’ve weighed in who’ve said based on their existing patents Nintendo don’t have a leg to stand on.
Nintendo as usual are just bullying twats who need to fuck off - they do the same to the emulation scene despite rarely making their old games accessible or having backwards compatibility until recently, and against anyone who makes anything more modern than them (not difficult, they’re about twenty years behind in online services, PC support, customer service, accessibility etc.)…
Catching a character with an item being patent is kind of wild to me.
So can Ghostbusters now sue Pokémon since obviously Ghostbusters came up with the capture idea first.
Hell Ghostbusters can also sue Nintendo over Luigi’s Mansion which is a blatant rip off. Aliens can sue Nintendo for Metroid while we’re at it.
I remember it took a while for Dead Rising to get sued, so you never know.
