The Pokemon Company and Nintendo have officially sued Pocketpair for Palworld.
In a press release Nintendo Co. Ltd. linked to on Twitter, they said this:
“Nintendo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Minami-ku, Japan; Representative Director and President: Shuntaro Furukawa, “Nintendo” hereafter), together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. (HQ: 2-10-2 Higashigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, “Defendant” hereafter) on September 18, 2024.
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.”
As of this writing, Pocketpair have not made a statement in response.
Japanese game industry consultant Dr. Serkan Toto chimed in on the news, saying::
“This will likely end very bad for Pocketpair, looking at Nintendo’s legendary track record (especially in Japan) regarding lawsuits like this one.”
Japan’s criminal justice system has its peculiarities. Infamously, it was found that the country had a 99.9 % conviction rate in 2001. Some experts explained that Japan also has a very low prosecution rate, with prosecutors only pursuing cases that are highly likely to lead to a conviction.
We don’t think we need to talk about Nintendo’s reputation in the legal world, but you can read more about Japan’s justice system here.
Palworld launched on early access on Steam and Xbox last January. It sold approximately 15 million units as of February 2024 and is one of the highest selling games on PC of all time.
The game has also been plagued with allegations of plagiarism, and perhaps forgotten are its alleged links to crypto. None of this discouraged Microsoft from greenlighting its entry into their Early Access program. It also did not deter Sony Music from starting a joint venture with Pocketpair for Palworld spinoff media and merchandise.
This could all add up to trouble for Microsoft, and PlayStation’s parent company Sony. Both companies are likely to be called for at least some information gathering at this lawsuit. And Nintendo may interrogate on why they agreed to work with Pocketpair with the red flags of potential plagiarism.
The press release did not go into detail on what patents The Pokemon Company and Nintendo held that were violated by Pocketpair. We will have to wait to verify if the specific claims people shared online that proved plagiarism were used in this case, but it is entirely possible there are other grounds for the lawsuit.
In the past, Pocketpair stated that they did not receive any notification from Nintendo of a potential lawsuit. Subsequently, Nintendo has officially confirmed they would protect their IP from infringement, but did not mention the names Palworld or Pocketpair until now.
As for the future of Palworld, we can look at an earlier Nintendo plagiarism case for a potential outcome. In 2013, Nintendo made the developers of mobile game Era’s Adventure change the appearance of its playable character Era, as it was clearly a copy of Nintendo fan favorite dinosaur, Yoshi.
After the change, Era actually still looked like Yoshi, but it was colored blue instead of green, and wore a backwards cap. These changes were clearly made to differentiate the character for the purposes of following IP laws.
So you Palworld players may not have to fret about losing the game they like. But the Pals will be getting a few aesthetic makeovers if the game survives.
