Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are Suing Palworld Creator

On September 18th, 2024 Nintendo announced some major legal news. Both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have taken legal action against Pocketpair, Inc. Together they filed a Patent Infringement Lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court. They allege that Pocketpair’s game, Palworld, infringes upon multiple of their patent rights.

We posted the News Release "Filing Lawsuit for Infringement of Patent Rights against Pocketpair, Inc."https://t.co/76ttENZXtv

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) September 18, 2024

As for Palworld, it released on Janaury 19th, 2024 and became a massive success overnight. The game managed to garner a gargantuan 25 million players in its first month. It's an open-world monster collecting RPG, with sandbox mechanics and most surprisingly, firearms. Additionally, the game's developer, Pocketpair recently responded with a statement of their own. In it they claim they're unaware of which patents they're allegedly infringing upon. Pocketpair also claims to have not been notified on the key details as of this moment.

Regarding the Lawsuit

Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement.

We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.

At this moment, we are unaware…

— Palworld (@Palworld_EN) September 19, 2024

Credits:
Editing & Writing: Zerp
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Social: Zerp

 

I’m curious as to what these patents are as well. I mean there’s loads of games that have copied Nintendo many of which are on the switch and most of which stood the test of time better than palworld did

 

I'm curious about what patents are ebeing infringed here. TPC recently filed a patent for throwing objects like Pokeballs into a field area in 3D space, but that was filed after Palworld's release, so I wouldn't expect it to hold up in a court of law.

 

This is a type of practical idiocy I don't think I've seen from a major corporation before. I've seen corporations be evil before, I've seen them be uninformed about things that seem obvious outside of the capitalist bubble, I've seen their power be outsmarted by smaller entities, but I've never seen them just... come up with a stupid plan for something easy to win - in this case, going after patents in a game that is heavily suspected to have used stolen art assets. Owning a gun but walking into a knife fight with bare fists.

 

I will admit that because I don’t know the full extent of what Nintendo’s patented I might not be able to speak definitively but being able to patent gameplay mechanics is a genuinely awful precedent. Maybe it could be excusable in the days where video games were thought of more like toys and companies had to make their own hardware to make games, but now it feels akin to patenting a film technique or a musical genre.

 

You guys remember when Simpsons Hit N Run "infringed copyright" with the green arrow from crazy taxi?

 

You guys remember when Simpsons Hit N Run "infringed copyright" with the green arrow from crazy taxi?

You mean Road Rage, Hit N Run was more GTA

 

I completly get copyright and support it!
Creating and owning your own characters is just fair! Its also automatic and free!
Patents however especially for simple or general things can go **** themselves!
A company called telekom literally just patented MAGENTA!

 

I want to hear more about the specific patents before I decide.

 

The Temtem devs right now

 

I will admit that because I don’t know the full extent of what Nintendo’s patented I might not be able to speak definitively but being able to patent gameplay mechanics is a genuinely awful precedent. Maybe it could be excusable in the days where video games were thought of more like toys and companies had to make their own hardware to make games, but now it feels akin to patenting a film technique or a musical genre.

It's unfortunately been done before with stuff like the Nemesis System and the Crazy Taxi arrow. Regardless, seeing Nintendo win a suit like this over something as vague as throwing an object at a character in a video game would be especially concerning. Palworld may be a derivative asset flip that only got by on pure shock value for a week or two, but I'm rooting against Nintendo here as much as the next guy.

 

I'm going to wait and see what will happen

 

I want to hear more about the specific patents before I decide.

Ball throwing is the patent!

 

Ball throwing is the patent!

Somewhat untrue; Yes, TPC filed a ball-throwing patent, but it actually being used in this case is still unconfirmed.

 

Something interesting I've seen going around is that apparently much of the patents filed and held by early video game companies, Japanese ones included were largely to prevent outsider/non-gaming companies from grabbing and misusing them. Essentially many developers get patent rights but don't largely enforce them against each other (infamous examples like Namco's loading screen minigame aside) with the understanding that it's to everyone's benefit that the proverbial sword remains sheathed. The speculation then becomes what exactly has Pocket Pair done for Nintendo to actually step and file suit when there are loads of Pokémon adjacent games they've never done any legal action against?

While the common response has been a combination of pettiness about Palword's success and/or a desire to hold down any competition to one of their biggest first parties, there's also some wondering if there's a strong belief by Nintendo about Pocket Pair not acting in good faith with the game (either due to mechanics or character designs). So much so that Nintendo is patent enforcing to make it very clear about what they'll allow when it comes to infringing on their ownerships and breaking the perceived good faith agreement. Basically, it's less about taking down Palworld and more telling various developers "This is the line, don't cross it".

I have no idea if this is true, but it is an interesting wrinkle to this whole story.