It’s been almost nine months since Nintendo and The Pokémon Company lodged a patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. The latest official update on the case came last month from Pocketpair’s side, when the developer confirmed that “the prolonged litigation” was still ongoing and announced that it would reluctantly be changing some of its game mechanics as a direct result of the lawsuit. Going off court documents shared by GamesFray, Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara recently shared some insights on how the case is looking at the moment.
According to Kurihara, Pocketpair has been following a standard legal strategy to defend itself so far. This includes denying infringement, claiming invalidity of Nintendo’s patent rights based on prior art found in existing games, arguing lack of novelty and lack of inventive step. He notes that while some past lawsuits like the Nintendo vs. Colopl infringement case saw Nintendo in an overwhelmingly advantageous position, the Palworld case feels much less one-sided by comparison. “This time, it appears to be a typical patent infringement case where both parties are engaging in a rapid back-and-forth, pushing for invalidity/infringement respectively.”
Interestingly, Kurihara also suggests that the scale of this lawsuit could potentially make it somewhat fruitless for Nintendo. To assert its claims against Palworld, Nintendo is employing lawyers from TMI Associates, one of Japan’s top five law firms, which has multiple bases cross Japan, Singapore, Silicon Valley, London etc., and specializes in intellectual property cases. On the other hand, Pocketpair is also being represented by major international law firm Nishimura & Asahi. With both parties enlisting high-profile legal teams, Kurihara comments, “although it’s a crude point to bring up, I can’t help but think that Nintendo may not be able to recoup the legal costs even if they win.” The exception would be if Nintendo were to increase their claim amount from the current $10 million yen (around $67,000 USD).
Meanwhile, although it had to compromise on game mechanics like throwing Pal Spheres and gliding on Pals, Pocketpair is still actively updating and putting out new content for Palworld. The game’s next major update, “Palworld: Tides of Terraria” is scheduled to come out in Summer 2025.
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This is the best news I’ve heard from this case. I really hope Nintendo loses this and lose much more in the process. Let’s go Pocket Pair!
If Nintendo is going after Palworld for all these things then they need to be required to go after every single other game that has any form of these same mechanics. They’re just petty that someone made a breath of fresh air in the market they monopolize before. Literally sold all my nintendo stuff to a family for 100. Major loss on my part but I refuse to give Nintendo anymore of my time and money.
If Pocketpair wins this lawsuit (I hope they do) this is going to a huge win, not just for them, but for all small startup game creators around the world. Nintendo is already ruining the Switch 2, I hope they get ruined by this lawsuit. I’ve playing Nintendo since the regular Nintendo came out, not anymore.
it’s pretty obviously about punishing pocketpair for their marketing success of palworld even though it’s a completely different genre of game and all the designs are different enough to be legally distinct. “Pokemon with guns” doesn’t reflect well on the massive multi billion dollar family friendly merchandising monster. and for it to be so successful after scarlet and violet were launched in such a rough state is salt in a self inflicted wound (they were likely unwilling to delay based on costs to change merchandising plans, the gsmes don’t make nearly as much money as the backpacks, cups, party decorations, toys, etc etc do)
It’s not about turning a profit on a lawsuit, it’s about sending a message even if it costs, nintendo can absorb the legal fees even if they were ordered to pay for both sides after a protracted multi year legal battle. it’s about stiffling innovation of potential competitors in the future, if you’re making a pokemon like game even in a different genre and you’re successful, nintendo will expend vast sums of money to weigh you down for years in the courts. lots of studios will just avoid battling monsters released from capture devices entirely because of this, even though there’s plenty of prior art.
These silly geese in the comments aren’t realizing it’s not about the money for Nintendo.
They obviously haven’t been trying to hurt anyone but they’re being dickheads and flexing their legal muscles.
Pocketpair are totally creatively bankrupt and had a really successful title which copies Pokémon ideas so far as to say that you capture the creatures that roam around the world in mysterious ball-shaped contraptions which makes them turn into a sort of energy.
Some of the key specific ideas could not be more copied from Pokémon and Nintendo will now flex real hard about this instance with with a whole library of bullshit to stop other people stepping this far into the blatant Pokémon ripoff territory.
Nintendo losing half a million dollars is like the ocean losing a cup of water.
This scare tactic is easily worth their money.
Nintendo gonna lose ether way
Could this potentially be why the Switch 2 is going to cost so much? I mean, just like with tariffs, they could just offset the difference of the effects of these lawsuits into their consoles/merch/games and whatnot. It may not be much in the grand scheme of their billions of dollars, but does that really matter to most corporate elites? Either way, it’s downright sad seeing the absolute greedy monster Nintendo has been without Reggie and Iwata.
“If Nintendo is going after Palworld for all these things then they need to be required to go after every single other game that has any form of these same mechanics.”
I mean… they literally are. What you just described was Japanese ip law in a nutshell.
This is a part of the reason they are so litigious. PART. The other part is their staunchly anti gamer attitude they have been rocking as a corporate identity for more years than I’ve been paying attention to them.
It’s solely about deterrence, and I certainly would not try to make a Nintendo-similiar game in case it sold well. Like there is stardew valley’s similarity to harvest moon, but pokemon is just too significant of an intellectual property. Even flappy birds, which its creator ended up deleting.
Nintendo has grown stagnant. Recycling the same algorithm with little to no effort put into refreshing it or giving it new life. Instead Palword comes along and shows us what pokemon could have been if the developers just opened their eyes and tried.
Instead Nintendo has sent their Ninjas to try and Stiffle and Silence creativity and even done the same to passionate fans. They had dropped the mask and shown what they really are.
Palworld “MUST” win. Not just for themselves but for the Health of the Gaming community. Nintendo needs to open their eyes and see the damage they have caused… they need to see what they have been doing is wrong. If their is any hope for Nintendo to redeem itself then they need to WAKE UP!
“Lack of inventive step” meanwhile pokemon started by straight up copying dragon quest.
KEEP FIGHTING PALWORLD! BEST GAME EVER MADE!!!
It’s not about extracting money from Pocketpair. It’s about undermining a competitor that threatens the dominance of one of Nintendo’s cash cows. One that many people think have stagnated. “If you don’t rate, litigate.”
Oh no, not the monopolized prejudice anti competition pokemon company, whatever will they do if they have proper competition that effects their ability to continue putting out low end poorly performing garbage 🤧
This whole article screams bias for not mentioning the astronomically unfair acts being taken by the pokemon company to harm an indie team who simply made a better product and did not infringe any copy right material.
Even the patents being produced in court are far fetched and didn’t exist before prior existing works
Karma
Nintendo needs to be humbled big time. If they want to play the game mechanics lawsuit game, then Ubisoft and Square Enix should join in. Pokémon is the obvious inspiration of Dragon Quest (just how PalWorld is the inspiration of Pokémon, funny isn’t it?). Breath of the Wild/Tears of the Kingdom uses the same game mechanic of revealing a map through a viewpoint (they ripped that from Assassin’s Creed). Those are just a couple examples, there are many more game mechanics Nintendo uses that were originally used in other games.
Nintendo is greedy and hypocritical, they need to be brought down several pegs. I hope this lawsuit bites them straight in the a$$.
Great Nintendo is getting to greedy hence the reason the last system I got from them was a Wii.
This is the best news, Nintendo deserves to be humbled and nothing else. Their terrible excuse for the switch 2, their anti-fan and consumer practices. There is a reason one of their main CEO’s is named Bowser. Hope they keep losing money and then she legal battle.
Find it funny pal world comes out Nintendo wants to sue the company but they didn’t go after the people who made nexomon literally a pokemon clone more then palworld is and it shows how much they care about there other games like smash there’s so many games out like that but Nintendo let thoes go by
Palworld Chads > Soytendo
Beyond the legal cost recoup, they will have this tarnish on their reputation for quite a while too. People haven’t forgotten about this case after 9 months of it ongoing with little news, and everyone still thinks Nintendo is wrong and horrible for it.
Now we know the real truth to why the Switch 2 and games are jacked up so much higher in price, as well as why many have stated it’s a rushed release!
Good. It’s incredibly stupid and petty in the first place. It’s one thing if you already owned the patents, but to create them 3 months before you issue a lawsuit is just the actions of a crybaby CEO with his head too far up his @$$. It’s the kind of thing Trump would do, and no one wants that kind of BS in the game industry
Man would that make me happy if that were to happen. Don’t dig a grave for others lest you end up in it yourself.
Only $67,000??
Look, Nin are definitely being massive Ricks, but the copyright is spot on. This wasn’t just a harmless mistake or even a possible purposeful copywriter, this was an outright taunt knowing how copyright happy Nintendo are. I hope Palworld gets rode into the ground.
You can tell Nintendo’s selfish, because ark’s creators are not going out of their way to sue them for patent infringements even though it’s pretty much a monster instead of a dinosaur. All this looks like too me is a peeing contest. Nintendo’s just ‘trying’ to make an example of pocketpair. I hate the concept of patents. Atleast for as long as they can have them. I’d get it if it was tops 10-15 years before someone can start developing it farther.
I hope pocket pair wins the fate of mankind hangs on the balance
In the long run, they are the ones who is losing money over this nonsense they originally had no business starting.
Palworld knew what they were doing from the getgo.
Good. Fuck Nintendo.
This industry really is screwed if we’re rooting for the company who’s idea of innovation is mashing together other games and deliberately copying art styles and bootlegging fan favorite designs.
Nintendo is a terrible company and deserves the L, but I’m not going to pretend like Palworld would’ve been successful if it wasn’t marketed as “Pokemon with guns and slavery” when it’s otherwise a carbon copy of all of the other open world survival games on the market.
And that’s just front costs. The lost revenue from lost custom due to their underhanded tactics in this case is going to be incalculable.
Maybe, Nintendo should step off it high horse and stop attacking any competition.
A loss for Nintendo is a victory for all of gaming as a whole. Gamers stand behind Pocket Pair.
I’m hoping Pocketpair can pull a win here. While I can see similarities to Nintendo games in Palworld, but that’s not much of a case on its own. Nintendo didn’t invent the monster capturing genre. It’s common for all sorts of media to draw inspiration from popular content. I don’t see the creators of The Shadow trying to put a stop to Batman.
In my opinion, Nintendo only acted because they felt threatened. They’re have been many creature capture games, but most of them kinda fell flat. Two years after Pokémon came out, Jade Cocoon came out on Playstation. Nintendo didn’t make a single move on them. They didn’t even make a move on Digimon World Dusk and Dawn when those came out on DS. I honestly think part of the issue was, people calling Palworld “Pokémon with guns.” If people hadn’t talked like that, I don’t think Nintendo would have reacted like this. They were too busy trying to take down fan games.
Nintendo should buy the studio.. So palworld team can fix there pokemon games.
Just make the legal team, and the copyright squatting scum, of Nintendo have some… one-way camping/fishing trips, and the situation corrects itself over time. Between the super high prices of its Switch 2 video games, and it’s underwhelming library, Nintendo will break eventually.
The solution is simple, if they try to delete me, then THEY will ironically be deleted themselves. Turnabout is fair play, and it is time for the hunted to become the hunter.
…never mind that Nintendo is being rather hypocritical about its family friendly image, and not just with petty lawsuits such as these, but with many of its Japanese exclusive video games, and with some of them that came out of Japan as well.
Zariel, how do the boots that you have been licking taste?
Aspen, in all honesty, everything just needs to collapse and we need to go to a post-apocalyptic future, as humankind has done all sorts of evil. Moreover, the inevitable collapse of the video game industry is going to make that somewhat localized collapse that had happened in the year 1982 in the USA seem like two old ladies arguing over a purse at a local flea market.