Nintendo and Pokémon are suing Palworld maker Pocketpair

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Palworld has been accused of violating several patents owned by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company.

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the developer of the game Palworld, alleging patent infringement.

This is from Nintendo’s Press release:
September 19, 2024

To Whom It May Concern

The Pokémon Company
Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Filing Lawsuit for Infringement of Patent Rights against Pocketpair, Inc.​

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.

What are your thoughts on this? Do you see Palworld surviving this lawsuit or not really?

 
The patent could be related to throwing an item to catch a monster, but it could also involve other aspects.





Pocketpair has issued their own public response to the lawsuit: news16 | 株式会社ポケットペア

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 of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.

Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo. Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world. Palworld was a surprise success this year, both for gamers and for us. We were blown away by the amazing response to the game and have been working hard to make it even better for our fans. We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.

It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit. However, we will do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.

We apologize to our fans and supporters for any worry or discomfort that this news has caused.

As always, thank you for your continued support of Palworld and Pocketpair.
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I was wondering if Nintendo would go after the game eventually, I guess they were taking their time since they were gathering evidence. I really hope this doesn't mean Palworld will be shut down and lost to time. To be fair as much as I did enjoy playing Palworld when it first came out, there were a few character designs that looked like they took the models of a few Pokemon and just tweaked them a little bit. But I'm guessing they're suing for the concept of a character catching monsters with a ball.
 

I think this will end bad for Pocketpair": Analyst says Nintendo's "feared" legal team wouldn't sue Palworld unless it was confident of victory​

Nintendo wouldn't sue Palworld unless it was pretty sure it could win a hefty chunk of the survival game's "hundreds of millions" of revenue, says one industry analyst who knows just how scary the Nintendo legal team is.
Speaking to GamesRadar+ about Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit, analyst Serkan Toto points out that "Nintendo is famously protective of its IP, and they have a very, very strong legal team that is feared in the Japanese gaming industry. You don't want to make Nintendo angry." That team's strength is part of why it's taken so long for this lawsuit to rear its head. It's been seven months since palword launched, and Toto posits that in that time, "Nintendo wanted to be absolutely thorough. They didn't want to shoot from the hip."


"[They wanted to] make absolutely sure that everything is mapped out, that they have counter-arguments against anything that Pocketpair will say in court, and only if they are able to build a really strong case where they think they are going to win, they will file the lawsuit. And I think that Nintendo is going into this lawsuit thinking that they're going to win. And I fear, looking at the track record, it's highly likely that they win."
Toto claims he "cannot really remember a single lawsuit that Nintendo itself initiated in Japan that they lost. I think they won every single one of them." While there's a first time for everything, he also thinks that "this will end bad for Pocketpair," and that Nintendo will be coming for as much money as possible from the company.

That could be a fee in the tens of millions of dollars, if not more. In 2021, Nintendo settled a similar patent lawsuit with mobile developer Colopl that netted it ¥3 billion (around $21 million). Until we know more about which patents Nintendo is chasing (and how many of them), we're unlikely to get any sense of how this might play out, but Toto thinks Pocketpair will look to settle (though the company has pledged to take on the lawsuit). That would involve handing over a chunk of what the analyst thinks amounts to "hundreds of millions of dollars, easily." Palworld's massive sales and its limited development costs linked to low Japanese salaries and the game's limited graphical fidelity mean that Pocketpair is sitting on a mountain of cash that it's not been planning to use for massive expansion projects.

Source: "I think this will end bad for Pocketpair": Analyst says Nintendo's "feared" legal team wouldn't sue Palworld unless it was confident of victory
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Demon_skeith said:
It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if it gets badly dragged out.
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They’re saying it could possibly be dragged out for a year or two if not longer. Unless Pocketpair decides to settle.

www.gamesradar.com

IP expert says Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit is "more likely" to take 5 years than to finish in 1, but Pocketpair can "easily" afford the legal battle

"This is not a simple 'pay me a million' patent suit"
www.gamesradar.com www.gamesradar.com
 
uptrendfinancialsignal said:
I am not shocked to find this lawsuit being filed. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company need to safeguard its IP. Right now, I'm thinking as to how this will impact Palworld’s future sales.
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True, but isn’t it possible that Pocketpair was an imitation of Pokémon, instead, it's an imitation of an imitation. This is an industry filled with borrowed ideas, and yet it has achieved monumental success over the years.
 
lens said:
True, but isn’t it possible that Pocketpair was an imitation of Pokémon, instead, it's an imitation of an imitation. This is an industry filled with borrowed ideas, and yet it has achieved monumental success over the years.
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That's a key distinction. Courts will look into whether the above mentioned works by Palworld is an act of copyright infringement or patent infringement. The only chance Pocketpair has is if they can demonstrate that the concepts of their game are different.
 
PocketGamer has released some details regarding the lawsuit and what patents they believe Palword is infringing. Nintendo and The Pokémon Company vs. Pocket Pair: Understanding the details

What are these patents?

  • A system allowing players to interact with characters in virtual space (patent No. 7545191 in Japan). The patent describes how the player can determine the aiming direction and launch objects or combat characters in that direction.
  • Transition between ground and air movement (patent No. 7545191 in Japan). The patentexplains the automatic switching of a character from the air to the ground when approaching the ground and vice versa.
It’s possible that these patents are the ones Nintendo considers infringed by Palworld. But further details remain to be seen.

What’s next?

It’s important to note that winning a patent dispute is no easy task. To prove direct infringement, it’s necessary to show that the product contains all the features and limitations specified in the patent claim. If even one element is missing, the plaintiff cannot win the case.
 
Palworld’s developer(Pocketpair) has released new details regarding the lawsuit.

Report on Patent Infringement Lawsuit | 株式会社ポケットペア

2: Target Patents
Patent No. 7545191
[Patent application date: July 30, 2024]
[Patent registration date: August 27, 2024]

Patent No. 7493117
[Patent application date: February 26, 2024]
[Patent registration date: May 22, 2024]

Patent No. 7528390
[Patent application date: March 5, 2024]
[Patent registration date: July 26, 2024]

3: Summary of the Claim
An injunction against Palworld
Payment of 5 million yen plus late payment damages to The Pokémon Company
Payment of 5 million yen plus late payment damages to Nintendo Co., Ltd.



 
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