Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have filed patent infringement against Pocketpair, the developers responsible for Palworld. The lawsuit is active in the Tokyo District Court, and seeks “injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld ..
. infringes multiple patent rights.” Pocketpair issued a response to the initial lawsuit on its website.
“At the moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.” Among the rest of its response, it details frustration that time will be taken away from game development and focused on legal battle instead. It also confirms that the company will do what it can to ensure its developers are not impaired by the lawsuit, however It’s true that it’s not clear what specific patents are being targeted here.
Japanese patents are defined as the “highly advanced creation of technical ideas that utilise the laws of nature,” when translated from Japanese through Google Translate. In this sense, it tells us that Pocketpair is being sued for its Palworld mechanics and not necessarily its designs, however we’ll know more when the case hits courts and records are made public. In the US The Pokémon Company owns several patents , these are not the ones under litigation in Japan.
There are several patents registered to The Pokémon Company in Japan, though it’s important to note that most patents are focused on a specific technical feature. For example, the most recently filed patent relates to a games system “processing method that can cause a player character to perform various types of actions on a field in a virtual space”; this is the ilk of patent under investigation. In terms of Palworld, the game’s technical attributes are nothing extraordinary.
It’s built in Unreal Engine and doesn’t necessary offer much innovation in terms of features. Since it’s patent infringement, rather than copyright, it’s likely that accusations of design plagiarism are not the focal point here. In January this year, Pocketpair CEO Takuro Mizobe said that “[Pocketpair has] absolutely no intention of infringing upon the intellectual property of other companies,” and The Pokémon Company later issued a statement that it does “intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon.
” The Pokémon Company’s lawyers have been busy this week. On Tuesday , they sued and won $15m from a Chinese Pokémon knock off – Pocket Monster Reissue or Koudaiyaoguai Fuke – after a lawsuit originally filed in 2021 came to a conclusion. Pocketpair did not respond immediately for comment.
.
