Nintendo Sues Pocketpair Over Palworld Patent Infringement

Nintendo announces a lawsuit against Pocketpair for patent infringement in Palworld, Pocketpair's creature collecting game. The prospect of a lawsuit came up almost immediately after Palworld's hugly successful Early Access launch in January, as its similarities to Pokémon inspired the description Pokémon with guns. The silence since then suggested the plagiarism controversy may have blown over, but apparently lawyers have been busy lawyering in the interim, and a lawsuit is now filed. A response from Pocketpair says it is so far unaware of "specific patents" it has violated, apologizes "for any worry or discomfort that this news has caused," and mostly talks about the game's success (thanks BBC News). Here's word from Nintendo:
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.
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8.
 
Re: Nintendo Sues Pocketpair Over Palworld Patent Infringement
Sep 19, 2024, 11:45
8.
Re: Nintendo Sues Pocketpair Over Palworld Patent Infringement Sep 19, 2024, 11:45
Sep 19, 2024, 11:45
 
jacobvandy wrote on Sep 19, 2024, 11:04:
"You can't patent throwing a ball!" scream all the armchair lawyers that spent 8 minutes speculating about a lawsuit Nintendo spent the last 8 months preparing...
There's an issue with the only kind of potentially related patent anyone has found, it appears that Nintendo applied for it 3 months after Palworld's release.
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 8.
Sep 19, 11:45Sep 19 11:45
 Re: Nintendo Sues Pocketpair Over Palworld Patent Infringement