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Palworld Developer Reveals The Pokémon Patents Nintendo Claims It's Violating (kotaku.com)

submitted 1 month ago by cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/games@lemmy.world

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Looking up those patents, the first alludes to a system where a player aims and fires an “item” toward a character in a field, and in doing so triggers combat, and then dives into extraordinary intricacies about switching between modes within this. The second is very similar, but seems more directly focused on tweaking previous patents to including being able to capture Pokémon in the wild, rather than only during battle. The third, rather wildly, seems to be trying to claim a modification to the invention of riding creatures in an open world and being able to transition between them easily.

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[-] riskable@programming.dev 1 points 1 month ago

Why? Software patents are already covered by copyright. Anyone can write software and they automatically get assigned the copyright for it. The barrier to entry is basically zero since everyone has a computer and nearly anyone can learn to program by simply taking the time to do so.

I mean, I also don't think patents should exist in general but there's a pretty clear difference between software and things in the physical world. Software is "just math". And I mean that literally: 100% of all software that exists can be reduced to math that you could--in theory--perform with a pencil and paper.

There's a lot of reasons why software patents shouldn't exist far beyond the scope of patents in general.

[-] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 1 points 1 month ago

Copyright only prevents you from copying code, not copying the design. Patents are meant to protect design. I also agree that software patents shouldn't go beyond normal patents or protect overgeneralized stuff with prior art.