Nintendo Sues Palworld Dev Pocketpair Over Patent Claims

After nine months of deliberation, Nintendo is now sueing Palworld developer Pocketpair over patent claims in Japan. The accusation of stolen Pokémon designs had put Palworld into the focus of the Japanese giant when the survival game launched to great success in January.

Nintendo of Japan has released a statement that they are now sueing Pocketpair, the Japanese development studio behind Palworld. When Palworld released in January, it reached record player numbers of up to 23 million players in a single month. However, players as well as developers saw striking similarities between the Pal monsters in the game and certain Pokémon designs by Nintendo and Game Freak, even going so far as to extract a statement out of Nintendo that were not at the moment looking to sue.

That was earlier this year. Now, in September, Nintendo has indeed sued under Japanese patent right claims, stating that “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.”

For the reason Nintendo is only sueing now, a representative told Game File: “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.”