Nintendo sues Palworld developers Pocketpair for patent infringement

Late last night, waves spread across the gaming community when the notoriously litigious Nintendo finally took action against indie developer Pocketpair and its mega-hit Palworld, posting an announcement of its bombshell lawsuit on its official site. The text of that announcement is 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.”

While more details of Nintendo’s lawsuit will surely emerge with time, we don’t know precisely what they are taking issue with just yet. Most would assume it has something to do with the character designs, but character designs can only be copyrighted, not patented. Nintendo attacking the front of patents means there are likely components of Palworld’s gameplay design that it thinks infringe on Pokemon’s design.

Pocketpair also released a response earlier this morning on Twitter and its official website. This announcement clarifies that Pocketpair does not yet know what patents it is accused of infringing upon with Palworld and restates Pocketpair’s long-term commitment to Palworld.

While it’s hard to say how this will pan out, Nintendo picking the patent angle is very interesting— mainly because Pokemon isn’t even the first monster-catching game series. It’s simply the most popular. For example, the more adult Shin Megami Tensei series started four years before the launch of the first Pokemon game. While fans have been using character designs as a smoking gun in anti-Palworld arguments since the game came out, it seems Nintendo is taking a different angle entirely— one where they may have less to stand on, depending on what patents in this subgenre of monster-collecting RPG it’s willing to fight in court to prove it owns.