Nintendo has officially announced that it is suing PocketPair, the creators of Palworld, in collaboration with The Pokemon Company. In a statement on NintendoCoLtd on X, Nintendo filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court on September 18, 2024. This lawsuit aims to seek an injunction against infringement and damages after PocketPair allegedly infringed multiple patents in Palworld.
This news isn't surprising, except that it didn't come sooner. Palworld was first released in January 2024, and The Pokémon Company announced later that month that it was investigating the game made by PocketPair. In the game, there are plenty of "Pals" that look incredibly similar to the creatures in Pokemon, to the point that it's bordering on stealing. While it did do relatively well when the game came out, there was still a lot of controversy about the aesthetic of the Pals and the cheap feel of the game. Despite this, Palworld has over 274,000 reviews on Steam, and sits at a Very Positive rating.
Nintendo has dealt with PocketPair before. People were modding the game to add Pokemon and other details from the Nintendo franchise. As a result, Nintendo managed to get the mods taken down. What this means in the future for the game is uncertain, and it's possible that people will see Palworld be delisted or completely unavailable to play, depending what the judge will decide.
The letter released by Nintendo was incredibly short but finishes by saying, "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."
Considering how aggressive Nintendo is when anything looks remotely similar to a product of theirs, or even Pokemon fan games or emulations, it's no surprise that they are going ahead with a lawsuit against PocketPair. It's likely that they will be quite aggressive in their lawsuits, as they have sent plenty of cease and desist in the past to many different creators regarding their Nintendo-inspired creations.
What comes as a shock to most people is how long it's taken Nintendo to do this, as most people expected that the day would never come when Nintendo would sue PocketPair, despite some of their designs being blatantly obvious. For example, there are Pals that look incredibly similar to Electabuzz, Wooloo, Yamper, and Eevee, to name a few. Barely any of the creature designs in the game are original and can be equated to some form of Pokemon across all of the generations or even a mash-up of two different Pokemon to create a Pal.
This controversy has been discussed on social media repeatedly over the months, but it seems that their day in court has now arrived. We will let you know whether Pocketpair has any comments to share on the news.
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