When Palworld released six months ago and become a shockingly massive hit, we all waited with bated breath to see if Nintendo would unleash their law hounds on the. After all, Palworld is heavily inspired by Pokemon, although it’s also very different in terms of how it plays. Nintendo is often viewed as one of the most litigious companies in the gaming space. And yet, surprisingly, while Nintendo did publicly state they were investing Palworld, nothing came of it. Until now.
Nintendo of America is now officially suing Pocketpair, the developer of Palworld, for what it describes as infringement of “multiple patent rights.” This is surprising as most people had assumed any legal action would be based upon copyright violations.
In a very brief statement, Nintendo says: “This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights. Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.”
Nintendo does not elaborate on exactly what patents Palworld has allegedly infringed upon.
Pocketpair has responded publicly to the accusations, even going so far as to pitch the upcoming battle as being to “ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.”
“At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.” reads the official statement.
“Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo. Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world. Palworld was a surprise success this year, both for gamers and for us. We were blown away by the amazing response to the game and have been working hard to make it even better for our fans. We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.”
The legal battle should be an interesting one, even to a layman such as myself. Despite being jokingly described as being Pokemon with guns, Palworld doesn’t actually play anything like the Pokemon titles outside of capturing creatures with a ball. However, quite a few of the creature designs in Palworld were accused of being copies of existing Pokemon with a few modifications.
I think the case may be built around claiming Pocketpair infringing upon is the act of throwing a ball to capture a creature, which Nintendo actually owns a patent to. Just for fun, here’s Nintendo’s patent for the act of tossing a Pokeball. Have fun trying to understand it, as it’s incredibly vague.
“In a first mode, an aiming direction in a virtual space is determined based on a second operation input, and a player character is caused to launch, in the aiming direction, an item that affects a field character disposed on a field in the virtual space, based on a third operation input. In a second mode, the aiming direction is determined, based on the second operation input, and the player character is caused to launch, in the aiming direction, a fighting character that fights, based on the third operation input.”
Other games that have used some form of creature capture and/or summoning have been very careful to avoid using a ball or anything like that so as not to draw the wrath of Nintendo.
Pocketpair has raked in a lot of cash from the massive success of Palworld, but compared to Nintendo it’s small fries and even if Nintendo doesn’t win the war, the battle could devastate Pocketpair. The best-case scenario for Pocketpair could be to try to settle the case, but if Nintendo thinks they have a strong argument they may seek to crush Pocketpair entirely to send a message. After all, we know Nintendo can be ruthless when pursuing legal action.
