Nintendo files $40 Million Dollar lawsuit against Japanese mobile game company "Colopl"

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Colopl is a Japanese mobile game company that has been running Shiro Neko Project, a pretty successful Action-RPG, since 2014 in Japan. The game was marketed as a true "one-finger RPG", allowing players, as the name suggests, to play the game with one finger. It uses an emulated analogue stick to accomplish tasks such as moving the character, attacking and using skills.

Nothing unusual, right? Well, it seems Nintendo doesn't think so as it filed a lawsuit against Colopl—three years after Shiro Neko Project's release, and after a year-long negotiations attempt between the companies—for violating five tech patent rights, and is asking for $40,000,000 in damages. One of these patents involve operating a joystick over a touch screen. Details are lacking since the lawsuit is fresh and everything official is in Japanese, but it is speculated Nintendo may be referring to the emulated analogue stick used in Super Mario 64 DS as an optional control method.

thumbpad.jpg

It's rather strange Nintendo specifically targets Colopl's game since there are A LOT of games that make use of an emulated joystick. It may be Shiro Neko Project uses a technique that too closely resembles the one used in Super Mario 64 DS. As said, details are scarce and there may be more to it. The other four patents Nintendo claims to have been violated are unknown at this time. The document provided by Colopl may contain more information, but it is Japanese. Maybe users who understand Japanese can help? Edit: No new information.

In any event, Colopl provided a statement claiming those assertions are unfair. Time will tell how this story will develop.

:arrow: Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4
 
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Itachi_hoshigaki

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Isn't that kind of unfair? I mean, there's a lot of games out there that are LITERALLY using a Mario-like character, Mario-like engine, Mario-like level design, and they go and file a lawsuit because this game uses a freaking emulated Joystick that look like theirs? I love Nintendo, but sometime they're too big of an A-holes in general.
 

Foxi4

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This is why the patent process needs to be revised globally. "Touchscreen analog" predates the DS, as does the use of touchscreens in gaming. This isn't something that even should be patentable, it's pretty obvious that if you have a device that uses a touchscreen, you will use the touchscreen, and this includes controlling characters in gaming.
 
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Yeah, I would imagine that Nintendo is fighting to stay alive right now because everybody is stealing all there software, I love nintendo, and have since I was a kid, and I think it is fucked up to steal there shit with one hand and talk shit about them with the other hand. I think when a corporation is pushed into a corner, and has to fight to stay alive, you will see them lash out, this is a taste of things to come.
Wat. Nintendo is fine. Even if they actually are losing software sales (the fact that maybe 3 people in the entire world are able to pirate games on the Switch right now says this isn't the case), unlike Sony and Microsoft, they are not taking a loss on the hardware, instead they are staying a generation or two behind so at the least they are able to sell the hardware at a profit.
 
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wicksand420

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Nintendo has been around since 1889. They weren't making video games, but they were still a business.
Technically they weren't called nintendo untill the 50's, so i would say nintendo hasnt been around for 100 years

In 1949, Hiroshi Yamauchi was attending Waseda University in Tokyo, however, after his grandfather died he left to take office as the president of Nintendo.[5] In 1951, he renamed "Marufuku Co. Ltd." to "Nintendo Playing Card Co., Ltd
 
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How is this worthy of a lawsuit but all the apps using Pokemon to sell their app isn't? I don't know how many times I've come across apps that say things like "true Pokemon mobile experience!" and the app icon is literally a Pokeball. Granted the actual game has nothing to do with or look remotely like Pokemon, but still.
 

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Technically they weren't called nintendo untill the 50's, so i would say nintendo hasnt been around for 100 years
It's still the same company so my point is still valid.
How is this worthy of a lawsuit but all the apps using Pokemon to sell their app isn't? I don't know how many times I've come across apps that say things like "true Pokemon mobile experience!" and the app icon is literally a Pokeball. Granted the actual game has nothing to do with or look remotely like Pokemon, but still.
It would be pretty hard to sue the Chinese developers of those games. Given how much counterfeiting there is there I'm sure copyright and the like isn't much of a big deal.
 

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How is this worthy of a lawsuit but all the apps using Pokemon to sell their app isn't? I don't know how many times I've come across apps that say things like "true Pokemon mobile experience!" and the app icon is literally a Pokeball. Granted the actual game has nothing to do with or look remotely like Pokemon, but still.
woo boy, all the trailers in youtube ads I've seen on youtube that brazenly steel clips from actual pokemon trailers and try to use is for there knock off pkmn game
 
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the_randomizer

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If you take that attitude towards everything, you'll only bring about pointless pain and conflict.

Well, it's true, companies are always suing Nintendo, now they know how Nintendo feels.

So the moral of the story is "if you feel bad about getting bullied, pick on someone small and vulnerable?"

I'm done here.
 
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RedBlueGreen

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Colopl stock BTFO xD

fVaKd8s.png
Now they have *debatably* reason to sue Nintendo for damages.

There's probably more to this than we know. Maybe that mobile game somehow used source code from Super Mario 64 DS for the controls.
I highly doubt that. Super Mario 64 isn't open source so there would be a lot of reverse engineering. A lot of mobile app SDKs would allow you to have touch screen buttons so programing a touch joystick wouldn't be hard with programing knowledge. This is literally just Nintendo acting shitty because they've been getting sued.
 
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I don't know what surprises me more.

The fact that you can copyright a control scheme
Or the fact that someone is actually trying to sue for it

Let alone the fact that they somehow lost money over this? How in the hell does this cost them any sales or money?
 

FAST6191

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I don't know what surprises me more.

The fact that you can copyright a control scheme
Or the fact that someone is actually trying to sue for it

Let alone the fact that they somehow lost money over this? How in the hell does this cost them any sales or money?
It's a patent. To confuse it for a copyright is to such things what saying sega playstation would be around here. Also https://www.gamnesia.com/news/SEGA-...o-and-Sony-Over-Certain-Camera-Features-in-Th and https://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=598894

Anyway as ever I find software patents a travesty (Japan and the US are about the only places to support them, everywhere else says software = maths and you can't patent maths).

That said I am struggling to think of prior art. Normally I could fire off a list of them but here I struggle. That said I am not amazingly familiar with palmtop gaming (HP, Sony and more had touchscreen devices for years before the DS came along), though if someone made an effort to port battlezone to it I imagine I would have done a similar thing.

It's still completely obvious (analogue responses to distance moved) to anybody vaguely versed in control design. Going to have to look up when my drawing tablet was created as it has relative and absolute modes, has a scroll mode and respects speed. Unless they are going to try for something really cute like saying "for a game" or "has a graphical overlay" then that probably goes to both prior art and obviousness. Ebay listing for the similar device says 2005 on the box ( https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Serif-Br...940296?hash=item2136995948:g:CmYAAOSw8i9aU-kF ) which is the year after game's release, never mind filing date for patent but that was a later model and there are ps/2 ones.

With all that though then while I can do English speaking countries + Europe as far as dissing patents goes I am less familiar with what I need to do for Japan. Going to have to return to this when it is not 3am and having had a crash course in Japanese patent law.
 

ertaboy356b

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I don't know what surprises me more.

The fact that you can copyright a control scheme
Or the fact that someone is actually trying to sue for it

Let alone the fact that they somehow lost money over this? How in the hell does this cost them any sales or money?

Well if you can copyright the shape of the phone and the word "react", then why not?
 

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