Nintendo and The Pokémon Company jointly file lawsuit for Patent infringement against Palworld creator Pocketpair, Inc in the Tokyo District Court

A news release issued by Nintendo Co., Ltd. and The Pokémon Company on Thursday September 19th (JST) has named Pocketpair, Inc. as the defendant in a patent infringement lawsuit filed in the Tokyo District Court. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are seeking an injunction against the company for "infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights."

The specific patents in question were not disclosed in the news release. Based on searching of Japanese patent databases, initial speculation is that these may include (but is not necessarily limited to) patents relating to game mechanics and gameplay features from Pokémon: Legends Arceus, and may include patents such as one for throwing and using Poké Balls in a 3D space (JP,2023-092953,A); and one for automatically switching between ride Pokémon as a player transitions between different terrain, such as between air and the ground (JP,2023-092954,A).

Palworld is an open-world survival and monster-training game that released in early access on January 18th, 2024. It quickly rose to become one of the fastest selling PC games of all time, selling 8 million units and having over 2 million concurrant players on Steam during its first week. Shortly after, it garnered controversy for how a significant number of its Pals (monsters) beared an uncanny resemblance to Pokemon, with accusations of plagiarism and the use of AI. Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe responded by stating that the designs were made by a single graduate student, and that they had no intention of infringing on any copyrights. After a number of complaints, Nintendo addressed this indirectly on January 24th, stating that they were looking into the matter.

Pocketpair's Craftopia, which is currently available in early access, has attracted similar criticism to Palworld, with the game's promotional videos explicitly and blatantly evoking scenes and gameplay mechanics from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.

 

I hope Nintendo wins.

 

Took them long enough. Fadworld is old news now however, and Nintendo might not even get their money's worth when this lawsuit is done, but I guess it's more about sending a message than about monetary compensation.

 

I hope Nintendo loses, being able to patent gameplay mechanics is complete bullshit and shouldn't even be legal. It's just useless crap that stifles game design and innovation. So many video games have copied and built upon the mechanics that other games used but when you patent a mechanic, it's like 'Nope, fuck you. You can't do that.'

Imagine if early video game devs in the 70s and 80s had patented those early mechanics and no one else could use those mechanics (unless they decided to license them from the patent holder) until 20 years had passed and the patents expired, it's be complete nonsense.

 

jesus christ finally!!!! nintendo Did The Thing!
i hope nintendo wins because hoooooly shit that game was begging to be sued by how most of the designs looked like certain pokemon. also palword is essentially pokemon But With Guns so

 

There's a kind of sad irony to this lawsuit, considering Nintendo's pivotal legal victory over Donkey Kong being a King Kong rip-off in the early days of their game development. This is pretty much a perspective flip of when Universal sued them in the 80s.

I don't understand patent law enough to understand the legal strength of cases like this, but it's always been claimed that big corporations will try to bankrupt opponents by drawing legal cases out forever.

 

The fact that people are really letting their hatred of Palworld's designs lead them to root for PATENTS OF GAME MECHANICS to hold up in court is tragic. "Palworld isn't necessary competition for Gamefreak. The gameplay is completely different" yet here we are watching Gamefreak go Yakuza mode because the gameplay as different as it is is supposedly too similar.

 

Good it's what they deserve for ripping off Pokemon, not just the designs of the creatures but the concept of monster catching and storing them in spheres and only adding the weapons angle to the gameplay as a way to cover up their theft.

 

What are we supposed to do?

Nintendo doesn't care what we think about this, and they know we are still going to buy their things.

 

jesus christ finally!!!! nintendo Did The Thing!
i hope nintendo wins because hoooooly shit that game was begging to be sued by how most of the designs looked like certain pokemon. also palword is essentially pokemon But With Guns so

Was about to say this.

A lot of Pals are on the edge of Pokemon designs, while others are blatant rip-offs (Verdash = Grass type Cinderace, Dumud is cross between Mudkip, Sobble and Clodsire, Brisla = Gossifleur/Lilligant, Robinquill = Baby Decidueye, Gumoss = Seedot, Anubis = Lucario and then there is Wumpo, who literally is the scrapped gen 2 design, Cremis being G-Max Eevee and Lunaris seems to be a cross between Meowstic and Mewtwo). There are more less out there, but there is also one blatant copy that gets a pass from me and that is Direhound, because its clear its a Lycanroc with black fur, but honestly, there isn't much you can't do with a werewolf design that isn't already done anyways.

 

All I have to say is, I am not quite sure which side to take, but, I can say that copying like this is how genres emerge. If this goes through, it might scare away people from copying others and thus new genres would stop forming. How genre forms is something unique is made, then that is copied, then innovation is done. But if people are scared away from copying by companies copyrighting the mechanics themselves, then genres will stop forming because unique games will be made but they won't form genres because no one will copy them