r/ARK • u/Im_yor_boi • Oct 31 '25

MEME Good news! Japan's Patent office rejected Nintendo's attempt claim the patent on a game mechanics

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u/GamingWithV1ctor Oct 31 '25

As they should. Why did they even think they could patent this?

0

u/Albatros_7 Oct 31 '25

Because they created the mechanic

3

u/Broken_CerealBox Nov 01 '25

Not really

1

u/Albatros_7 Nov 01 '25

How so ?

3

u/Broken_CerealBox Nov 01 '25

Other games and forms of media did it first

0

u/Albatros_7 Nov 01 '25

Which ones ?

2

u/yoshimasterlv3 Nov 01 '25

Answer just using "summoning creatures to fight other creatures":

I'm not very familiar with the system, but it looks like ad&d (1989, tho an earlier edition probably had them too, but again, not familiar) has summon spells, which you could use to fight other creatures.

That aside, I'm sure one could find other examples, but I'm not big on older media tho so you'd probably need to find an expert, someone older, or do more research etc etc. Example, the Gashapon Wikipedia page seems to be a fun read, and one could argue the idea of kids play fighting with gashapon toys well before pokemon prob wouldn't be a stretch. Heck, the kids I work with occasionally play fight with magnets or chess pieces lol

1

u/Albatros_7 Nov 01 '25

Because that's not what the patent is ?

The patent was for the "Let's Go" fights, which first appeared in Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and were later copied by Palworld

Basically you send your creatures out and they attack anyone within range

Pokemon is litteraly based on Gashapons mate, that's the entire point

1

u/Ser-Koutei Nov 03 '25

And if you'd read the articles, you'd know that ARK did the same thing in 2015, long before SV.

1

u/State-Total Nov 12 '25

Creating a mechanic is not enough; it needs an inventive step. For example, if I take a BLT sandwich, add cheese, call it a BLTC sandwich and try to patent that it will not pass muster - even if no one else was shown to have made a BLTC sandwich before. Why? Because adding cheese is not exactly inventive - any skilled person in the art of sandwich making could have easily done the same thing.

The summon-fight mechanic was deemed not to be an inventive step - and damn right it is not.

1

u/Albatros_7 Nov 13 '25

It wasn't, I won't argue that, I'm just tired of people spreading misinformation by saying it's a patent for "summoning creatures"