Nintendo And The Pokémon Company Are Suing Palworld Developer [Update] (original) (raw)

Remember back in January when The Pokémon Company said it planned to “investigate” monster-taming game Palworld for intellectual property rights infringement? Well, it looks like Pikachu and friends are officially filing a lawsuit against the game’s developer.

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On September 18, the company and Nintendo released a joint statement on the publisher’s website announcing the lawsuit, saying it is seeking compensation for damages against Palworld developer Pocketpair on the grounds of patent infringement. Shortly after its January 2024 launch, Palworld skyrocketed in popularity while also raising eyebrows for its monster designs, which seemed nearly identical to those in Pokémon.

Nintendo and Pokémon’s full statement reads as follows:

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.

Kotaku has reached out to Pocketpair for comment on the situation and will update this story should we hear back.

Despite the similarities in designs, some players believed that Palworld offered a better experience than many of the most recent Pokémon games. This followed years of growing discontent with games like Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, which were plagued with technical troubles at launch. The similarities were a hot topic when the game launched, and fans were quick to mod the game with Pokémon characters, which was promptly DMCA’d. This all comes two months after Pocketpair partnered with Sony to create Palworld Entertainment, a company dedicated to expanding the franchise.

Update: 9/18/24, 10:23 p.m. ET: Nintendo released the following statement to Kotaku via email:

“We filed the lawsuit at this timing after careful investigation of the content that is the subject of this lawsuit. We will refrain from commenting on topics that relate to the content of the lawsuit.”

Update: 9/19/24, 6:55 a.m. ET: Pocketpair has released its own statement on the lawsuit on its social media channels saying it has not been made aware of the specifics of the patents it has been accused of infringing upon. The full statement reads as follows:

Regarding the Lawsuit

Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement.

We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement.

At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.

Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo. Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world. Palworld was a surprise success this year, both for gamers and for us. We were blown away by the amazing response to the game and have been working hard to make it even better for our fans. We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.

It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit. However, we will do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.

We apologize to our fans and supporters for any worry or discomfort that this news has caused.

As always, thank you for your continued support of Palworld and Pocketpair.