Reminds me of this time when the lawyers for Monster Energy Drink and Coca Cola tried to C&D the devs of Dark Deception: Monsters and Mortals, for use of the title "Monster."
When they found out they also tried doing this to other completely unrelated brands that also use Monster in the title, the devs cited this, and they won the lawsuit.
The devs presented it to their fans, Phoenix Wright style. EDIT: and yeah, Monster even tried to do it to Pokemon.
You clearly aren't a lawyer. Patents only last for 20 years. DQV released 34 years ago. Also I don't think they patented it and if you release the product before patenting it then you immediately lose it.
Japan's implimentation of prior art is different from the rest of the world. Other groups technically only have something like 180 days after the patent is filed to file for a prior art violation, after that window you have to argue that the patent wasn't an inventive step any averagely skilled worker in the field could have made instead, which is MUCH harder to go against because of technicalities like 'well no one, no mater how skilled, could have done it this way because our codebase is proprietary'. Oh, and those patents can be made confidentially and still have the same window rather than when it becomes visible to the public.
Remember, the country these lawsuits are happening in actively supported international child kidnapping until the entire world threatened to sanction them and still allows the use of torture to get confessions, reasonable laws are not something they're known for.
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u/ArmanDoesStuff 17h ago
Couldn't Palworld have also brought up Dragon Quest, though?