This is a US patent; not directly relevant to Japanese operations.

Yes, absolutely. And there is money in patent trolling. I just don’t see the business case here. Why damage the Nintendo brand with such shenanigans when you could leave the patent trolling to some formally independent company. Maybe I just underestimate how much money can be made by shaking down small devs.

This patent could have a chilling effect, but there’s no way it would stand up in court. They can still use it as a bargaining chip. Court cases are expensive. And if you don’t have a legal department, they are also a personal drain. But that’s small fry. Financially, I don’t believe it makes sense for them to resort to criminality to get such a patent. Maybe they hope it will influence their court case in Japan against Palworld?

What did they tell him about how his father and uncle died?

Probably the truth, just like they told him the truth about vaccines.

Oh right. It’s Thursday. Hail Thor! Hail the Protector of Mankind!

They’ll play whack a mole for decades, just like they have been for P2P file sharing.

Some differences to that, though.

• Downloaders can be prosecuted. That raises the question of what happens to kids or their parents who use non-compliant sites.

• Blocked servers are inaccessible to adults, too, which raises freedom of information issues. These servers don’t contain illegal information, after all.

• Large scale piracy is illegal pretty much everywhere, meaning that the industry can go after the operators and get the servers offline. Not so here.

Ok. Smaller platforms like this here lemmy server don’t do anything because it’s expensive, or they are ethically opposed. They have no business in Australia and fines can’t be collected. Australian kids (and adults who want to be anonymous, or don’t like the government-mandated changes) flock to these platforms.

What now?

Why do you believe that?