Nintendo and The Pokemon Company sue Palworld creators for patent infringement

Back when Palworld first went viral for its ‘Pokémon with Guns' concept, many had assumed Nintendo would try to block the game's release with legal threats. As it turns out, the game was allowed to launch but now, just ahead of the game's impending PS5 release, Nintendo has officially filed a lawsuit. 

Pocketpair, the studio behind Palworld, is being sued by both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company for ‘patent infringement'. Crucially, the lawsuit has been filed with the Tokyo District Court, rather than an overseas court. While Nintendo is no stranger to conducting its legal battles on US or EU shores, copyright laws in Japan are typically much stricter, so this will have been a tactical decision to try and sway things.

Palworld shares one core similarity with Pokémon, it is a game about collecting and taming monsters. However, Palworld takes things a step further by incorporating open-world survival and base-building elements. While all of the Palworld designs are original, with no direct rip-offs of any one particular Pokémon, it is clearly a Pokémon-inspired game, and as there are so many Pokémon in existence at this stage, it would be difficult to avoid making a Palworld creature without any similarities to at least one of the hundreds, upon hundreds of Pokémon that have been designed over the years.

While legal experts in countries like the US believed that Nintendo would not have a strong enough case for a claim, the copyright laws are much more restrictive in Japan, which could lead to some trouble and potentially stop Palworld from becoming available in Japan.

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KitGuru Says: I would have expected this lawsuit prior to Palworld's release but at this stage, the game has been out since January and has been played by over 25 million people. It is a bit late to try and put the genie back in the bottle. 

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