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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dragonblade" data-source="post: 1167644" data-attributes="member: 2804">After reading the suit, I don't think this really has much to do with patent infringement as it does with Pokemon USA hiring away WotC's Pokemon staff and using them to startup its own Pokemon card game as soon as their contract expired.I think WotC is in the right of it, which is one reason that Pokemon USA is already in settlement talks.  They know they will get their ass handed to them in the courtroom so they settle with Wizards, probably agreeing to pay WotC some sort of royalty in order to use their CCG patents and in return for WotC lifting some of the nondisclosure strictures on their ex-employees.Basically, WotC gets free money out of the deal and effectively offloads a low-profit property that they don't have to pay to license anymore. Good deal for them.Nintendo spun off Pokemon USA in order to basically keep all the Pokemon profits in house. Lagging Gamecube sales are killing them and Pokemon is a cash cow for them, but they were previously only getting licensing fees while WotC got all the profits. They let their license with WotC expire, hire away all the WotC execs who managed Pokemon for WotC and go into business for themselves. Unfortunately, for Nintendo its too little too late. The Pokemon craze is dead and WotC is not just going to let themselves be screwed over like that. Bad move on Nintendo's part.Somehow, I'm not surprised. Nintendo has a rep for screwing their partners over and making bad moves in the process. The biggest example of which is Sony and the development of the Playstation.  The Playstation was originally going to be the Super Nintendo CD add-on system.  Sony put a lot of development money into it and then Nintendo said forget it, we'll just stick with cartridges for now.  Several reasons for that are Nintendo controls most cartidge manufacturing, not only do their 3rd party game makers have to pay high license fees, but their carts are usually manufactured by Nintendo as well. Nintendo didn't want to give up their control over cart manufacturing and they also believed that the kid audience preferred carts over CDs, because they don't scratch, etc.  Nintendo didn't really consider the older gamer crowd that dominates the game market today.Anyway, Sony got really pissed and decided to get their revenge by taking all those development dollars and turning their Super NES CD machine into the Playstation. They did and went over to the market that Nintendo had previously neglected, the older gamer crowd.  A market that just exploded recently due to all those 80's Nintendo kids growing up. Sony became king and the rest is history.</blockquote>

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