Nintendo has filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the creators of Palworld

[ThomasWinwood]

(Note that this is Nintendo Co. Ltd. and The Pokémon Company, not Nintendo of America and The Pokémon Company International: this is a Japanese suit filed in Tokyo. If you need a primer on the relationship between Nintendo, Ape Inc./Creatures Inc., Game Freak, The Pokémon Company and more, Moony has you covered.)

From their press release:

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.

It'll be interesting to find out what patents they allege have been infringed. I think people were expecting a copyright infringement suit, since the tempest in a Twitter teapot revolved around whether certain Pals had unlawfully used mesh data from the Pokémon games, but patent infringement implies there's some protected game mechanics which Palworld stepped on.

 

[Zeostar]

I forgot palworld was a thing.

It was trendy for about two weeks.

Nintendo sure did wait on this one.

 

[Azurefel_Raphleshia]

What took them so long?

I expected them to sue the moment the game released!

 

[Corveone]

Legal proceedings take their time. Anyway, it says multiple patent rights, so I guess that's most likely related to individual Pal designs, because it's not like Nintendo has a patent on monster catching or any other game mechanics.

 

[Explorer of Time]

Legal proceedings take their time. Anyway, it says multiple patent rights, so I guess that's most likely related to individual Pal designs, because it's not like Nintendo has a patent on monster catching or any other game mechanics.

Pal or Pokemon designs would fall under copyright law, not patent law.

Nintendo does own patents for multiple game mechanics, because patent law is indeed that stupid, and they're likely suing over alleged similarity to either Ride Pokemon and/or to Pokeball-throwing mechanics from Legends: Arceus. There is a significant chance that these patents get thrown out if Nintendo loses the case, thankfully.

 

[Setsuna]

Not too much to say for me, I don't really follow this kind of thing. But it definitely wasn't a question of if it would happen, it was a question of when it would happen. Never been into Palworld, I found it extremely unappealing, but I also didn't really shout at the people who were.
Though I did hear a take that it was taken too far by Pokemon fans to take action against Palworld and that things got out of hand.
If you ask me it's just a messy situation all around, pretty much has been from the beginning.

 

[Meganium]

I can't be the only one who knew this was gonna happen.

Never got interested into Palworld. I never liked their "concept" anyway. But at least they should have done something more unique to "tame" monsters.

 

[Elite Overlord LeSabre™]

So, if you're an indie developer looking to create a new creature-collecting game, what do you have to use to capture them in order to avoid the wrath of Nintendo? Would pocket-sized cubes, pyramids, or dodecahedrons be different enough from Pokeballs? Or would you have to go the Team Rocket route with nets, cages, mechanical hands, cardboard boxes, or whatever else? Maybe your character has to get their CDL and keep all their larger creatures in the back of a Mack truck.

Point is, we're talking a slippery slope here. Nintendo/Pokemon does not need a complete monopoly over the entire creature-collecting sub-genre of games, but depending on how loose their definition of a "similar" capture mechanic is, it's looking like they could establish exactly that. After all, it's practical for a character on an adventure to carry around pocket-sized capture tools. It's not practical to have them juggle multiple cages, boxes, or drive around in a van with their critters in the back.

(and if this is based on the Pokemon-riding mechanic, news flash for Nintendo: Humans have been riding on animals for CENTURIES before Pokemon was even a thing.)

 

[ThomasWinwood]

So, if you're an indie developer looking to create a new creature-collecting game, what do you have to use to capture them in order to avoid the wrath of Nintendo?

We don't (as far as I can tell) know what the lawsuit says yet, so any assumptions about what Palworld may or may not have infringed are premature. Everything else is conspiracy-theory nonsense. (They didn't own the "entire creature-collecting sub-genre" at the height of Pokémania when the Pokémon games were doing their biggest numbers, they won't own it today.)

 

[Corveone]

So, if you're an indie developer looking to create a new creature-collecting game, what do you have to use to capture them in order to avoid the wrath of Nintendo? Would pocket-sized cubes, pyramids, or dodecahedrons be different enough from Pokeballs?

We don't know for sure if it has something to do with the catching mechanics yet. Every monster catching game has some kind of device to catch the monsters after battle (Nexomon, TemTem, Casette Beasts, etc.) and there's no patent infringement issues with that. Maybe the thing is that Palworld was too blatant in making the catching devices a straight PokéBall rip-off and call them Pal Spheres...

As for riding creatures, pretty sure that can't be patented, as it's been a thing in many games for decades, and not specifically this kind of games.

 

[PoryKid575]

I'm not too surprised Nintendo's suing considering the numbers Palworld was pulling and it's blatant similarity to Pokemon, but it's a bit odd they're claiming patent rather then copyright infringement. I'll be curious to see what patents they think Palworld's violated considering it's in a completely different genre; can't say I have much sympathy though. It's an obvious ripoff of Pokemon (much more so then other monster collecting franchises like Digimon and TemTem) and the devs have a history of creating similar questionably unique games. We'll just have to see how it all pans out I suppose.