'Pokemon Go' Makers Face Class Action Lawsuit For Trespassing

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grilledcheez

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Oct 24, 2012
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I can understand how home owners would be pissed. Niantic should maybe open a complaints forum for people's who homes are being trespassed because of pokestop or pokegym and Niantic could move it to another location OR remove it from the game as a stop or gym. For the most part, I can just catch pokemon from the street if its in someone's yard. People should not be trespassing on PRIVATE property. However, as for a museum, isn't it a PUBLIC space? I wouldn't say that is trespassing, maybe loitering for hanging around and catching pokemon.

On the other side of the coin... It's not like Niantic is physically trespassing... I don't understand how this would hold up in court... but I'm no law expert, so wtf do I know.
 

NeilBlake

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Explain how people who are pestered constantly by Pokémon Go players in their own homes and on their own property are the "greedy" ones? Not to mention players going on to cemeteries. That takes a special kind of greediness and disrespect to do that.

No, the simple fact is that Niantic stupidly did not consider the placement of their pixels before launching the game and the players that go onto cemetery grounds and ring the doorbells of private individuals just to capture pokemon are just way to self absorbed and unable to know what is and isn't appropriate.

 

NeilBlake

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What Niantic should have done is limit this to public spaces such as parks, playgrounds, campgrounds, etc. as well as making deals with businesses about where players could go to. There was a real opportunity for marketing it seems they missed out on which also would have eliminated this issue.

And a place like a museum may be public, but players who are interfering with the activities of patrons there for what the museum intended would indeed be trespassing and Niantic would be legally liable for being the party encouraging the players to go these places.

 

MinisterPhobia

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Aug 2, 2016
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>> When Niantic released Pokemon Go, it randomly placed Pokemon, Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms all over the world. <<

This is INCORRECT. Do some research. All Pokestops are in identical positions to "Portals" from Niantic's previous game, Ingress.

With this having been so wrong, the rest of the article is suspect.
 

Grontar

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It's not quite correct to say that Niantic placed stops and gyms randomly across the world. They placed them in the same locations as Ingress portals, which were themselves mostly generated by the players. I think they might have just discovered the downside of letting people crowdsource things without paying proper attention.

Ingress portal submissions were always theoretically checked by somebody at Niantic though, so they've only got themselves to blame however you look at it.
 

grilledcheez

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The only problem with that is, it's near impossible to build the entire world map, it would take them forever. Also, the game is based on an older game of theirs called Ingress. Which, in that game, the players actually established all the locations. So, they imported that database of locations and at random were turned into Pokestops or Pokegyms. It's not like they knew whether they would be public or private property.

The whole game is basically GPS google maps with their Pokemon overlay and all the stops/gyms are based on landmarks players of Ingress had mapped. So I can see how there would be issues with this.

That is why I mentioned they need to have a forum for people to complain and then they can make adjustments. They can't possibly know whether each location in the world is private or public.
 

Marcato

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Correction: The location of each pokestop and gym was NOT randomized. They were pulled from Niantic's previous game: Ingress. Those portals were submitted by users and approved by Niantic.
 

Metteec

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Not all museums are public property. There are quite a few privately-funded museums that require membership or fee. For example, many zoos are privately funded. Having a Pokestop at these locations is unjust enrichment of Niantic. I agree that locations should be limited to public areas only.
 

thundervore

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I do not understand this. People hear "pokemon" and automatically think they can make easy money by sueing. When Ingress came out and uses the same map data with portals no one cared, no one sued, hell most people didn't even care or knew about the game. But as soon as they hear "pokemon" and think it is related to Nintendo they get sue happy.

What are they going to do when they find out that Pokémon Go have little to nothing to do with Nintendo?
 

porgey69

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Do they realize that Niantic didn't "randomly place" pokestops and gyms? They were submitted by users that played their game Ingress. I suppose Niantic did approve all of the locations, but they did not make them. Are they going to sue the people who played that game and submitted the locations?
 

jasonelmore

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These plantiff's are dumb. all you gotta do is fill out a removal form on Niantic's website get your house/property removed from the game. Also, users submitted those hotspot locations, not "niantic at random". This is just another typical money grab by a bunch of no-name lawyers trying to make a quick million in legal fee's
 


Wow, way to over react to a statement that is not inherently incorrect. Niantic used the locations submitted by users from the Ingress game, but it randomly placed Pokemon, Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms. The locations were not completely random as they were submitted by users, but the process of placing Pokemon, Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms at these locations was completely random.

So this statement:
"When Niantic released Pokemon Go, it randomly placed Pokemon, Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms all over the world."

Is inherently true. If I had said:
"When Niantic released Pokemon Go, it placed Pokemon, Pokestops and Pokemon Gyms all over the world in random locations."

Then the statement would be false. Do not fault the article because you miss read a sentence.
 
This is a bunch of bull crap. The company does not make people trespass. They trespass by their own free will. It is their responsibility to ask for permission to enter the property, not Niantic's. Do cell phones make people get into car accidents? No, their own free decision to use it in the wrong moment causes accidents, just like how people using this game improperly causes them to trespass. Not the game's fault, it is the people trespassing at fault.
 

NeilBlake

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No one is getting "sue happy" cause it's Pokémon. People are suing because players are intruding on private property, places that have no business having pixels to capture. Not sure how that is hard to understand. You want your doorbell constantly ringing by people non stop wanting to come into your yard?
 

NeilBlake

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Except you're, intentionally I believe, missing the point. Niantic has chosen to allow their pixels to show up on people's private property thus Niantic is indeed encouraging the behavior. Niantic should have gone through and made sure where the Pokémon would show up, and if that was too big of a task for them, maybe they shouldn't have designed the game the way they did.
 

NeilBlake

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No, it's not dumb on their part. Someone who wants nothing to do with this game should be forced to jump through hoops to get people to stop trespassing on their property. People need to learn where responsibility lies with things. It is Niantic's responsibility to make sure their game does not encourage people to intrude on others.
 

NeilBlake

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Then if they couldn't do the job properly they should not have released the game. It's their responsibility to make sure their product does not encourage their player base to intrude on other people. If they don't have the resources to do that, then they should have rethought the games mechanics.

There is no excuse for people to go to someone's house and ring the doorbell to ask to go into someone's yard just to catch pixels and people should have to be continually bombarded by these players and then go out their way to make it stop. And mourners at cemeteries certainly should not be disrespected by Pokémon players running around that type of property.
 
Where is the evidence that they are encouraging people to trespass by assigning stuff to private property? Who says they aren't encouraging people to ask for permission to enter property? Niantic's has not verbally encouraged trespassing. Them "encouraging" it is your own interpretation NeilBlake and not something that can be solidified with proof and held up in the court of law.

Of there is a newspaper article about some private museum and how great is, and a bunch of people trespass and break into it the next day, did that newspaper encourage people to trespass and break in? Is it the newspaoer's fault? The only thing Pokemon go does is bring to light the REAL issues which is people and their poor choices.
 

spagunk

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Apparently nobody remembers Ingress which, for those who don't know, is where all of the pokestops came from. They ported a percentage of the Ingress portals over as Pokestops and Gyms.

So you've had 6 years to complain about these locations but did nothing about it to question the ingress players utilizing such stops.
 

Co BIY

Splendid
Bottom feeding lawyers trolling for a settlement.Their worst examples are a few homeowners who had people come to their door and ask for permission to enter their back yard. In what way is that possibly a trespass? Museums that had a few guests play a quiet cell phone game inside instead of look at the displays ?

The entire class action system is an incredible scam that allows lawyers to amass huge fees while the theoretical "victims" usually receive paltry compensation. The theory of how class actions should work is very different from how they end up working in reality.

Hopefully a judge will throw these bums out of the courtroom.
 
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