Only original, and arm yourself with the national tide,

in order to compete globally.

After Nintendo's move, another major Japanese game manufacturer struck hard to defend its patent rights.

Recently, Japanese mobile game developer BOI (Bank of Innovation) issued a statement saying that on September 30, the Japanese game manufacturer SEGA (SEGA) has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against BOI, and the company received the relevant complaint on October 21.

BOI mentioned that the lawsuit is against the company's two games, "Memento Mori" and "Cryptotract" (hereinafter referred to as "Fantasy Beast Contract").

Sega believes that the two games infringe its patent rights and claims compensation of 1 billion yen (about 47.22 million yuan) and additional deferred interest.

In addition, the service of "Phantom Beast Contract" was discontinued last year, and Sega asked the BOI to stop "Memento Mori" immediately.

"Memento Mori" is too important for BOI, and although BOI is a publicly traded company in Japan, it is not very large.

They are a developer focused on mobile games, and Memento Mori, which launched on October 18, 2022, is their most important product.

In fact, this product is also one of the few popular original IP second games that local Japanese manufacturers have run out in the past two years.

According to the third-party data platform, the turnover of "Memento Mori" in the first month of its launch was close to 180 million yuan, and the cumulative turnover revenue since its release exceeded 2 billion yuan.

Since the beginning of this year, its monthly turnover income has still fluctuated between 30 million and 50 million yuan, which can be regarded as the first echelon of original IP second games in Japan.

According to a report by Japanese media Otaku Souken, the sales revenue of "Memento Mori" once exceeded 90% of BOI's total revenue, and recently "Memento Mori" has just passed its second anniversary celebration and has been caught in a lawsuit turmoil.

When some media looked at the five patents that Sega claimed to have been infringed, they found that these patents are not only common in gacha games, but also in all game categories.

For example, No. 6891987 is a patent that facilitates the synthesis and enhancement of props, and the patent is explained in its document as follows: "The system can automatically extract the same kind of content group from the player's content, automatically select the content of the synthesis element and material, and perform the synthesis." ”

In addition, just before that, Nintendo also filed a patent infringement lawsuit with The Pokémon Company in the Tokyo District Court against Pocket Pair, the developer of the game "Phantom Beast Palu".

According to Nintendo, the Phantom Beast Palu game is alleged to infringe a number of patents and requires the defendant to cease the infringement and pay damages.

In the past, for games, the borrowing of gameplay was not infringement, but the high imitation of the game image and background was suspected of infringement.

It is impossible to confirm whether it was AI drawing that caused the "Pokémon" elements to be incorporated into the AI deep learning process.

But as new news continues to pour in, this argument may not hold water.

Perhaps, the breakthrough of the lawsuit really lies in the gameplay that could have been "copycat".

It is reported that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have applied for a patent in 2023.

The patent content is that the player throws items in the field to catch monsters.

Theoretically, all games that use a similar system will be considered infringing by Nintendo.

For such incidents to be so frequent?

Why are major Japanese game manufacturers gradually tightening the original "turn a blind eye" patent issue?

At present, a large number of two-dimensional mobile games in China are also operating in the Japanese market, and what impact will the successive patent prosecution cases have on the overseas expansion of China's mobile games?

In response to the changes in the Japanese market, how should domestic overseas manufacturers respond?

In this regard, Li Yutong, a reporter from the Daily Economic News, had an exchange with Shule, and the monkey thought:

It's true that gameplay generally can't be the end of a copyright lawsuit, but it's different if a patent is applied.

Previously, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company applied for a patent in 2023 for players to throw objects in the wild to catch monsters.

This makes this kind of gameplay impossible to replicate by other companies.

Similarly, Sega has also applied for a similar gameplay patent, which can achieve control over a certain type of gameplay.

As the competition in the game industry becomes more and more fierce, especially in the vertical track, a large number of competitors have also poured in, similar to obtaining gameplay patents through some specific skills, avoiding one's own innovation or creativity from being quickly copied by competitors, has become a tactical strategy.

In particular, Japan's gaming industry is too focused on game consoles, and this urgency will become even more intense when the mobile game field is largely lagging behind.

Chinese mobile games are often not only borrowed from gameplay, but also "like" to carry elements of well-known games.

This will encounter copyright sniping in overseas competition, especially in the Japanese market, where there are more "handling" elements in domestic two-dimensional games.

The only way to deal with this is to be original, arm the game with the national trend, and use Chinese cultural elements familiar to Japanese players such as Tang Feng to form a real differentiation from Japanese game products and compete for the market.

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