There was a bit of controversy surrounding Palworld, due in large part to similarities with Pokemon. The game released 8 months ago, but it seems Nintendo wasn’t in any rush to respond. Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have filed a joint patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair Inc., the developers of Palworld. You can see a social media post relaying the news, as well as Nintendo’s full statement about the matter, down below.
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.
The discourse around this is gonna be headache and a half sdfgfg
If anyone is interested, here’s some patents people are speculating on:
Abstract: In a first mode, an aiming direction in a virtual space is determined based on a second operation input, and a player character is caused to launch, in the aiming direction, an item that affects a field character disposed on a field in the virtual space, based on a third operation input. In a second mode, the aiming direction is determined, based on the second operation input, and the player character is caused to launch, in the aiming direction, a fighting character that fights, based on the third operation input. Filed: May 2, 2024 Publication date: August 22, 2024
Abstract: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target object is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground, the player character is automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground.
Filed: May 2, 2024 Publication date: August 29, 2024
These were filed after Palworld released so idk how they could be sued but I’m no lawyer.
This is pathetic they waited for the game to get big and known and then pull this. Maybe if you made Pokemon games people like to play Nintendo we wouldn’t NEED palworld and other creature collector type games.
it takes time to compile a sound case. If they did it immediately, they would potentially be going in with a weak case, now they have had time to comb through the game for anything that they have legal strengths for, and run it by their various teams and compare them to the laws to see if the matters found were worth further pursuit. 8 months is a pretty average time to compile a case like this.
Building a case is not simple, that’s why it takes time. And the process is not to “debunk the hype”, I don’t know where you get the idea that it’s for that, but rather to review the broken patents and have justice in this regard.
brother, palworld fell off a cliff a while ago
Is palworld still a thing?
what the fuck is happening today with the nintendo news? this is crazy lol.
One wonders why they waited 8 months after release to do anything, especially since Palworld was known about long before it got into the hands of players. Perhaps something in a recent game update actually went too far? I don’t know, I don’t play Palworld.
But the delayed action definitely raises my eyebrow.
Pokémon company or Nintendo (I forget which) mentioned back when PalWorld was released that they were looking into the game to see if there was copyright infringement. The long wait tells me that they’ve been digging into this very thoroughly, and now that they’ve finally gone through with the lawsuit perhaps they have more of a case than anyone would have initially thought.
Nintendo is really anxious on getting rid of the game for copying Pokemon.
Hard to have an opinion unless we know what the patent is
True, we really can’t choose a side with this one, we don’t even know if Nintendo has better proof than we ever did, from what I can tell some pals models had some very… “sus” inspirations, especially the tail of that mon that almost matched with that level 3 water starter from sun and moon, other Than that there were some clear inspirations in terms of designs but there was never solid proof of them reusing assets
I hope this doesn’t mean that Palworld won’t be available on PSN, haven’t been keeping up with Palworld until recently when they claimed it’s supposedly on the list of games for Tokyo Game Show for PSN.
So it actually happened. I was on the train that it wouldn’t because it was doing things just differently enough that it might not be attacked by the big N. All that time that went by further supported that theory too. But here we are. Hope this doesn’t become unplayable on Steam. I’ve put in a large chunk of hours and don’t want that dedication to evaporate over this.
Did Game Freak rebrand to The Pokemon Company?
Yes and no, Game Freak is still Game Freak. But Pokemon is Owned by 3 Owners; Game Freak, Creatures Inc, and Nintendo. all 3 of them created The Pokemon Company to handle all the merchandising, advertising, and the all sorts because it all got to big for 1 of them to do it. So Technically yes, Game Freak is The Pokemon Company, but so is Creatures Inc, as well as Nintendo.
Chillet’s variant even copies Furret’s shiny color scheme.
But seriously, any way to download this game and play it offline before it gets blipped?
Certain girl who likes to stay fit
YARRRRRRRR ALWAYS SEARCH IN THE SEAS MATEY!!!!! but nah, i don’t think palworld will shut down because of this lawsuit, the worst nintendo can do to them is changing the designs of some mons, the game itself is not pokèmon at all from what i can tell
Being a lawyer myself, I can tell you that 8 months to launch such a procedure is VERY short…
You have to gather evidence and above all, the most important thing is that it is solid to be admissible, all this takes time because the slightest mistake can cancel everything.
And who still believes that Palworld has plagiarized nothing, frankly..?
I don’t see how it plagiarized anything. I need to know what the specific patent they are claiming though. Otherwise… jeez, not even Pokemon invented the monster-catching genre. It just popularized it.
The designs are strikingly similar and derivative.
So is a good majority of entertainment? I don’t think you can sue for that unless you’re copying it or trying to pretend to be the authentic thing.
I really can’t think of anything unless somehow throwing pokeballs in real time can somehow be patented. I guess the Go series and Legends did that before Palworld but… I don’t know if you can patent that kind of gameplay.
They can claim that the designs are too similar to their copyrighted monsters. Copyright covers that.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/19cwdif/cant_trust_my_eyes_anymore/?tl=pt-br
sorry for that shitty meme, can’t find another better image, but yeah stuff like this is still incredibly suspicious to me, the tail not only had the same shape but it has the same identical wisps on the same sides, and it was sticked on a mon that looked incredibly similar to serperior. also that cincerace knockoff… something is off…