AernaLingus [any]

  • 0 Posts
  • 31 Comments
Joined 3 years ago
Cake day: May 6th, 2022
  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.nettoGaming@lemmy.zip•Could The Palworld Lawsuit Come Down To Pokeballs?English
    4·
    1 month ago

    One thing I’m confused about is why even the Japanese article referenced is just speculating, albeit in a more reasoned fashion–they use the fact that it’s a joint lawsuit from Nintendo and The Pokémon Company to narrow their focus to jointly-held patents in a relevant time range. I did a bit of Googling and one result said that you can only request court records if you know the case number, which is pretty wack if that’s the case. Like, PACER sucks and all (always check RECAP first and use their extension to upload documents for everyone!) but I’ve been following a random-ass civil court case in the US for about a year now and that’s shit is all online. Seems wild to me that even an intrepid reporter who marched on down to the courthouse wouldn’t be able to get their hands on the complaint. Big cases like this have ramifications far beyond the involved parties, so it’s important for the public to be able to see the arguments being made in detail.

    DeepL translation of Japanese article

    Nintendo and Pokémon Inc. filed a lawsuit against Pocket Pair, developer of Palworld, for patent infringement (Nintendo press release). As you know, there was some opinion that the modeling of the monsters in Palworld was similar to that of Pokemon, but it was difficult to question copyright infringement (they were close, but just barely avoided it). So Nintendo exercised its rights not by copyright but by patent right. An injunction and damages are being sought.

    Palworld is not free to play, so I guess from the introduction videos on YouTube, etc., but aside from the monster sculpting, the game system does not seem to be that similar to Pokemon, and it seems to be an open-world game similar to Ark, etc. If there are similarities, it seems to be Balls. If there is a similarity, it is in the part where you capture monsters by throwing a ball-like object at them. If there is any similarity, it is the part where you throw a ball-like object at the monster to capture it.

    Since Pokémon and Nintendo are jointly suing, we can naturally narrow the number of patents down to 28 if we assume that the patents are also jointly filed by the two companies. Of those 28, four were filed as divisional applications after PAL World went into service (January 19, 2024).

    The one with the most recent filing date is patent 7545191. It was filed on July 30 of this year, requested for examination on August 6, requested for accelerated examination, and was already granted a patent on August 22. It is believed that the Super Accelerated Examination system was used.

    The following patents follow: Patent No. 7528390 (filed on March 5 and registered on July 26), Patent No. 7493117 (filed on February 26 and registered on May 30), and Patent No. 7505854 (filed on February 6 and registered on June 17). All have requested accelerated examination (possibly super accelerated examination).

    All are divisional applications of the December 22, 2021 application, so the effective filing date is December 22, 2021, and they are enforceable against Palworld, which entered service on January 19, 2024. It is believed that the scope of rights of the divisional application of the existing patent was amended to “pull in” the composition of the allegedly infringing property for use in litigation, a technique commonly referred to as “fitting in” (we wrote an explanatory article on this in the case of Konami’s lawsuit against Cygames “Uma Musume”). In terms of timing, it seems natural to assume that the lawsuit was filed pending the grant of these patents.

    Let’s take a look at the contents of Patent No. 7493117, which is easy to understand and seems to have a broad scope of rights among these patents. Claim 1 reads as follows

    Claim 1.

    To a computer of an information processing apparatus,

    In a first mode,

    determine a aiming direction in the virtual space based on a first operation input, which is a directional input; and

    When a second operation input is made, having the aiming direction be directed toward a field character positioned on a field in the virtual space, and having the first indicator displayed,

    In accordance with the third operation input, the player character is made to perform a movement of releasing a capture item for capturing the field character in the aiming direction,

    When the capturing item hits the field character, the player character is made to make a determination as to whether the capture is successful or not,

    If the capture success judgment is positive, the player character is set to own the field character that was hit by the captured item,

    The first indicator is information indicating how easy it is to make a positive judgment of the capture success judgment.

    In the end, what it is saying is that a ball (capture item) is thrown at a monster (field character), a successful capture decision is made, and if the capture is successful, the monster can be set to be owned, in which case the ease of successful capture is indicated by some indicator (not a number, but a color or design is also acceptable, according to the specification). This is all. If you want to make a Pokémon-like game, it may be difficult to avoid it, and if you are not aware of it, it may conflict with it. I feel that this is a killer patent. Other patents will be explained later.

    Of course, there is no proof that these patents are used, and there is a possibility that other patents are used as well. It is also possible that Nintendo or Pokémon is filing another lawsuit using patents of which it is the sole owner. Nintendo is also known for its incredibly powerful patents, such as the patent used in the lawsuit against Coroplast (see related article), which restricts users to play games only with mutually registered users in communication games.

    As was said during the lawsuit against Coroplast, it seems that Nintendo’s corporate policy is that even though they have a super-powerful patent portfolio, they do not actively enforce their rights themselves, but only fight thoroughly when their IP is about to be eroded.

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.nettoScience Memes@mander.xyz•Poop KnifeEnglish
    19·
    2 months ago

    Davis states that the original source of the tale was Olayuk Narqitarvik. It was allegedly Olayuk’s grandfather in the 1950s who refused to go to the settlements and thus fashioned a knife from his own feces to facilitate his escape by skinning and disarticulating a dog. Davis has admitted that the story could be “apocryphal”, and that initially he thought the Inuit who told him this story was “pulling his leg”.

    That’s a long payoff for a practical joke, but totally worth it.

    Also, unsurprisingly, they won the 2020 Ig Nobel Prize in Materials Science (lol) for this one (video of the ceremony, Ig Nobel “lecture” from the lead author (also the primary pooper))

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.nettoMemes@midwest.social•Been there
    21·
    3 months ago

    I went through a phase in my late teens/early 20s where I had major bladder shyness. There were a few times in especially high pressure situations (e.g. right after a movie or during a break in a football game) where I just stood there for 30 seconds with no results and was like “welp I guess I’m just gonna have to hold it until I get home.” I honestly don’t think I had any major psychological shift, since I was and still am majorly anxious, but thankfully it waned over time and I can now piss in peace.

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.nettoAlways the Same Map@lemmygrad.ml•Always the same mapEnglish
    12·
    7 months ago

    Seems like it’s not fake, per se, but the methodology is highly suspect:

    Unfortunately, there are 3 major problems with this survey done in 63 countries in 2015

    1. it was conducted differently in each country ( face to face, by phone, or via web survey) which impacts the level of honesty with which people answer the question

    2. it ignores the cultural approach to precision and shame on the way respondents answer the question (and not only how they behave).

    3. Some countries surveyed only urban people, while other surveyed both urban and rural people. Each country also surveyed different age groups.

    When asked if they AUTOMATICALLY wash their hands with water and soap after using the toilette, a Dutch man who would use street urinals like this one [link was dead–I grabbed another image and rehosted on Hexbear] just once per year and always wash his hands with soap otherwise, would most likely answer NO. While a French or an Italian would have the exact same behavior would answer YES to the same question because the notion of AUTOMATICALLY is not perceived the same way in each of those countries.

    Also, cultures that are more sensitive to guilt or shame will not have the same level of honesty when answering the question, even anonymously from behind a screen. (Even though shame and guilt will most likely also influence their actual behaviour and not only their answer to the survey, it still pollute the result of the survey)

    And that’s another major problem of the survey, as it’s has been done differently in each country. Face to face in some, by phone or on the web in others. And it’s pretty obvious that people will more often be embarrassed by saying the truth when asked face to face or by phone than anonymously from behind a screen

    More info in PDF in English about the original survey here

    Another link wich is visually easier to read but the country names are written in French (as the rest of the document) and only slides 4 and 9 are relevant for the global results.

    (reddit source)

  • AernaLingus [any]@hexbear.nettoPiracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ@lemmy.dbzer0.com•this can't be real. is it?English
    53·
    9 months ago

    Apparently so

    According to a site admin from that forum post (which is from April 2021–who knows where things stand now):

    If you use the OpenSubtitles website manually, you will have advertisements on the web site, NOT inside the subtitles.

    If you use some API-software to download subtitles (Plex, Kodi, BSPlayer or whatever), you are not using the web site, so you do NOT have these web advertisements. To compensate this, ads are being added on-the-fly to the subtitles itself.

    Also, from a different admin

    add few words from my side - it is good you are talking about ads. They not generating a lot of revenue, but on other side we have more VIP subscriptions because of it :) We have in ads something like “Become VIP member and Remove all ads…”

    Also, the ads in subtitles are always inserted on “empty” space. It is never in middle of movie. What Roozel wrote - “I think placing those ads at the beginning and end is somewhat OK but not in the middle or at random points in the film” - should not happen, if yes, send me the subtitle.

    If the subtitle is from tv series, there are dialogues from beginning usually. System is finding “quiet” place where ads would fit, and yes, this can be after 3 minutes of dialogue…

    This is important to know, I hope now it is more clear about subtitle ads - why we are doing this, there is possibility to remove them and how system works.

    so a scenario like in the screenshot isn’t supposed to happen. I guess if you really wanted to see if it happens you could grab all the English subs via the API and just do a quick grep or what-have-you