Pocket pair
Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have announced that they have filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the makers of the heavily Pokemon-inspired PalworldThe lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court seeks an injunction and damages “on the grounds that Palworld “infringes multiple patent rights,” the announcement said.
“Nintendo will continue to take appropriate measures against any infringement of its intellectual property rights, including the Nintendo brand itself, in order to protect the intellectual property the company has worked hard to build up over the years,” the company wrote.
The many superficial similarities between Pokémon And Palworld are clearly visible, even though Pocketpair's game adds a lot of new features to Nintendo's own (like, uh, guns). But making legal hay over even weighty similarities between games can be a tricky proposition. That's because copyright law (at least in the US) generally doesn't apply to the mere design elements of a game, applying only to “expressive elements” like art, character design, and music. Generally speaking, even blatant rip-offs of successful games are able to make just enough changes to those “expressive” parts to avoid legal trouble. But Palworld could cross the high legal threshold for infringement if the game's 3D character models were indeed copied almost entirely from the actual Pokémon game files, as some observers have alleged since January.
Which patent are we talking about?
In addition to the mere copyright concerns, Nintendo specifically claims in its announcement of the lawsuit patent infringement on the part of Palworld (although this discrepancy may be due to erratic translations of the original Japanese). A patent lawsuit would seemingly require a unique game mechanic or feature that has specifically been granted stronger protection by the patent office. While the Pokémon Company does hold a number of (U.S.) patents, most of them appear to be for various server communication methods or the sleep monitoring capabilities of Pokémon Sleep.
“Palworld is such a different kind of game than Pokémon“It's hard to imagine what patents (*not* copyrights) could possibly have been infringed,” game industry attorney Richard Hoeg posted on social media Wednesday night. “Initial reaction is that Nintendo might be going too far.”
PocketPair CEO Takuro Mizobe told Automaton Media in January that the game had “passed legal reviews” and that “we absolutely have no intention of infringing on other companies' intellectual property.”
Shortly after Palworld became a mega hit on Steam in January, Nintendo said it would “investigate and take appropriate action” against “another [then-unnamed] company's game released in January 2024.” Those measures are being implemented now, even as PalworldThe initial popularity of 's has given way to a more modest player base in recent months.
