Nintendohas revised the wording of one of the patents specified in the company’s lawsuit againstPalworld, a survival game centred on collecting creatures. Florian Mueller, a legal expert on intellectual property, has described the move as a “weird” one, and says that it probably indicates that Nintendo is worried about the outcome of the case (nice spot,GamesRadar+)
Mueller was previously employed as a legal consultant to Blizzard. He gave his thoughts on Nintendo’s latest legal move in an article onGamesFray, explaining that Nintendo is employing unorthodox tactics because the case is struggling.
Nintendo’s Case Against Pocketpair Is Struggling
“Litigants don’t change a patent in the middle of an infringement case unless they feel the patent is at a fairly high risk of being deemed invalid in its original form,” Mueller writes. “That doesn’t mean they always lose […] However, the way Nintendo has worded its new claims here, is — to put it bluntly — weird, and doesn’t appear likely to solve Nintendo’s problems in this dispute.”
The patent changed by Nintendo involves transitioning between two mounts in a video game in a smooth manner. Even for a patent, the wording is very obtuse and unspecific, and Mueller points out that Nintendo’s new inclusion of the term “even when” is very uncommon in patents because of how subjective the term can be.
The patent reads as follows:
“. . . andeven when[emphasis added] any boarding character other than the aerial boarding character capable of moving in the air is the currently selected boarding character and a first operation input is given when the player character is in the air, the computer causes the aerial boarding character to appear in the virtual space, and causes the player character to board the aerial boarding character instead of the currently selected boarding character from among the boarding characters; . . .”
“The above type of wording is extremely contorted, trying to complicate things for the purpose of putting up a huge smokescreen, and above all, ‘even when’ is normally not found in patent claims,” Mueller says. “It is almost a Hail Mary: a desperate attempt to win by doing something odd. However, Presiding Judge Motoyuki Nakashima is very experienced in patent law. He can’t be gaslighted by some strange claim language.”
Mueller concludes by saying that it’s difficult to make sense of what Nintendo is trying to achieve with this case, and “Nintendo itself is slowly but surely getting to the point where it can’t make sense of it anymore.”
Palworld recently launched Tides of Terraria, a crossover update that added new islands, pals and mechanics.
