Nintendo and Pokemon Company sued Pocketpair (Palworld) over non specified "Infringement of Patent rights" - Patent breach, not copyright. Some lulz are guaranteed now that apparently Sony lawyers are in on the case too.

[Carpenter Trout]

I don't know if this goes in the news, but I thought here would be better because this is a situation we should monitor, there will be some lulz.
Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are suing Pockepair over a nonspecified "breach of Patents".

https://www.nintendo.co.jp/corporate/release/en/2024/240919.html

(ghostarchive)

September 19, 2024
To Whom It May Concern
The Pokémon Company
Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Filing Lawsuit for Infringement of Patent Rights​

against Pocketpair, Inc.​

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.

Pocketpair responded that they weren't notified by which infringement exactly and that they are going to fight back.

https://www.pocketpair.jp/news/news16

(ghostarchive)
Sep.19.2024

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.

which they reposted on their ExTwitter profile too.

https://x.com/Palworld_EN/status/1836692701355688146

(ghostarchive)

I heard that some of the Sony lawyers are going to step in too, I don't know if they're gonna defend Pocketpair against Nintendo or simply covering their asses.

This is reminiscent of another ancient SEGA Lolsuit from 2003, when they sued Fox Interactive, stating that "the Simpsons Road Rage" was identical to "Crazy Taxi" because of the gameplay style and the fucking arrow being a patent.

https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/candce-16186-sega-of-america-v-fox-interactive#overview

This one cause quite the stir, and it's still discussed to this day because it could be considered a patent on a game mechanic, something that, to what I heard, is not possible to do. This case was solved outside of court between Fox and SEGA.

 

[Dagoth AMOGUS]

They tried this once before as a scare tactic. I’m guessing this is the same.

Nintendo, people actually like your products, despite you getting in the way of them. Don’t take away your only advantage as a business.

 

[Galeocerdo]

I was thinking about this and I think the general consensus is that it's over the idea of how you catch the pals (I.e. within "Pal Spheres" which're functionally like Pokéballs), along with maybe things like the UI elements being similar/identical to those found in their recent LoZ titles.
I do think this is a scare tactic, I am unsure about Sony's involvement, there's a cope part of me going "Hopefully they step in just to slap fight with Nintendo" but with Sony's recent fuck ups I don't know if they have the money spare to start fighting Nintendo on behalf of PP. I fully believe this'll be settled out of court though after back and forth and Palworld will have iterative updates which'll take out elements Nintendo doesn't like which aren't going to harm the game long term.
My personal take is this is really shitty from Nintendo and I dislike these big ass game companies who "Lock down" ""Game Mechanics"" just so noone else can use them, like the Nemesis System from The Shadow of Mordor series, granted at least Nintendo uses Pokémon and it's mechanics alot unlike WB who've locked down that idea and never uses it again, but it just feels super shitty and scummy.
But hey, should be an interesting case. Realistically could Nintendo force Palworld to close? I don't think they could remove purchased copies from people but they could try to stop the game getting updates or being sold anymore at very worst right?

 

[unhealing wound]

They're allowed to patent the HL2 gravity gun for Zelda's Mod of the Kingdom but someone puts an animal in a small sphere and it's worthy of a lawsuit.

 

[The Last Stand]

This is the modern day Crazy Taxi copyright infringement case. You shouldn't be able to copyright a gameplay loop.

 

[Trogspawn]

I stand by that this is an attempt by Nintendo to harm PocketPair financially, regardless of whether they win or not, and keep them wrapped up in legal bullshit while they prepare to launch their new Pokemon Legends garbage.

 

[Thiletonomics]

So what are the odds that Nintendo will put out "threats" on Japan's PM Fumio Kishida to Abe him and/or his family members, to "sway" the case in their favor? Does Nintendo even have the power to go after Heads of State like that?

 

[Bob's Fuckass Head]

Bunch of sour grapes from Nintendo, basically admitting they're out of ideas for Pokemon and they're resigned to decreased profitability. Assuming they're only suing in Japan, I have no fucking idea what to expect from this case. Nip law is completely incomprehensible to me.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

This is the modern day Crazy Taxi copyright infringement case. You shouldn't be able to copyright a gameplay loop.

Maybe in PalWorld’s loop didn’t look so similar and work the same to such a silly degree.

Bunch of sour grapes from Nintendo,

Got to protext their shit. And PalWorld clearly stole a bumch. And then PocketPair were stupid enough to declare they wanted to make Cartoons and sell merch. Which was the thing that was always going to make Nintendo act.

 

[augment]

Nintendo has always been like this. Soyjacks are too young to remember when they went after video rental stores, or the game genie, or just about freaking anyone for anything since time immemorial. None of this is going to make a dent in their latest pokemon offering (it will suck and it will sell gangbusters)

 

[Wherethereisawhip]

Nintendo has always been like this. Soyjacks are too young to remember when they went after video rental stores, or the game genie, or just about freaking anyone for anything since time immemorial. None of this is going to make a dent in their latest pokemon offering (it will suck and it will sell gangbusters)

Nintendo learned from Warner Bros the potential issues with trademarks with the whole Donkey Kong Lawsuit. They're a paranoid bunch that will push the legal system to it's limits in order to firmly establish what they can get away with.

 

[The Last Stand]

This is reminiscent of another ancient SEGA Lolsuit from 2003, when they sued Fox Interactive, stating that "the Simpsons Road Rage" was identical to "Crazy Taxi" because of the gameplay style and the fucking arrow being a patent.
https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation/candce-16186-sega-of-america-v-fox-interactive#overview This one cause quite the stir, and it's still discussed to this day because it could be considered a patent on a game mechanic, something that, to what I heard, is not possible to do. This case was solved outside of court between Fox and SEGA.

I would think the people buying Palworld are aware that Pokemon exists. It's not like they're trying to pass Palworld off as THE next Pokemon.

 

[ToroidalBoat]

the game genie

I think the suits at Nintendo went after Game Genie claiming that it "made derivative works" or something like that, but all it does is "hack" the game.

Wasn't aware they tried to stop vidya rentals.

 

[instant]

Bunch of sour grapes from Nintendo, basically admitting they're out of ideas for Pokemon and they're resigned to decreased profitability. Assuming they're only suing in Japan, I have no fucking idea what to expect from this case. Nip law is completely incomprehensible to me.

It's probably gonna be a repeat of the colopl lawsuit (similar case of Nintendo making up patents waaaay after a big game came out and planned to use it to snuff out competition). The one thing about Nip law is that evidentiary standards are very strict, which basically translates to everything costing much more and taking much longer on average.

Nintendo didn't win the colopl lawsuit at all by the way. But they just kept filing new shit that would extend the time, forcing the defendant to respond to all of them and also forcing the court to review them all. After 5 years Colopl went fuck it and agreed to a settlement, but they still settled for way less than what Nintendo asked for (Ninty asked for $40m but Colopl paid US$30m).

Most likely this is going to go the same route. It is virtually impossible for Nintendo to win any of their patent infringement cases but PocketPair is always gonna be forced to waste lawyer fees on a response.

 

[Markorian]

I hate the entire concept of patenting video game mechanics, whether it's this, or bamco patenting loading screen minigames, or wb's nemesis system. However, I also hate lazy asset flips and early access open world survival crafters, so I'm not particularly choked up.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

I would think the people buying Palworld are aware that Pokemon exists. It's not like they're trying to pass Palworld off as THE next Pokemon.

All the talk about it was ‘PKM with gun’, the majority of the mechanics and Pals bore striking resemblances to Pokemon’s own stuff. Oh and you had all the people known for fovering Pokemon covering PalWorld declaring it the next Pokemon.

Pocket Pair knew exactly what they were doing.

 

[TheDarknessGrows]

Nintendo, people actually like your products, despite you getting in the way of them. Don’t take away your only advantage as a business.

How does this lawsuit prevent Nintendo from having the best stable of game software developers in the industry?

I will fight you.

 

[mr_negativity]

Software patents could be used to kill off independent gaming developers should they cut into the revenue of big gaming studios. The big gaming studios can come up with patent pools that covers the core gameplay elements of every gaming genre. They won't sue each other as they can negotiate zero royalty agreements. They won't sue small unprofitable games. They will sue the indie games that hit big. All it takes is a few studios behind high profile breakout hits to get sued into bankruptcy and the chilling effect will stifle any investors, thus ensuring that all hit games will be ESG compliant slop.

Imagine if the entire concept of a talent tree was patented. Almost every modern RPG uses this mechanic. How about patenting the concept of being able to customize a weapon in a first person shooter. Namco could have become a gaming monoply if in the early 80's patented the concept of power ups. The entire 80's and 90's were filled with games that blatantly copied key innovations in gameplay mechanics off of each other. That is how gaming evolved.

 

[6MillionCoofs]

That is how gaming evolved.

Yes and? The people they were stealing from could have stopped them if they wanted to. That’s the thing with Nintendo. It is, mostly because it is Japanese first and foremost, actually enforces it’s shit.

Some money person likely ran the numbers and went ‘we’d lose way more than we’d gain with the audiance if we lost rights to the god damm Poke Ball via inaction’

 

[LazyLizard]

How does this lawsuit prevent Nintendo from having the best stable of game software developers in the industry?

I will fight you.

how are you so willing to defend nintendo when they so openly hate you? what would it take for you to realize they are a terrible company that makes mediocre games?