On September 18th 2024, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company (TPCi) filed a lawsuit for copyright infringement against Pocket Pair Inc, the developers behind Palworld.
Palworld is a Steam game that is an action-adventure survival game, and involves hunting for monsters. Many Pokémon fans and gamers immediately began to draw parallels between Palworld and Pokémon, with many calling Palworld ‘Pokémon with guns’. It quickly sold over 8 millions copies on Steam in it’s first few days of release. Social media users shared similarities between designs that seemed to combine two or three Pokémon into one Palworld monster, making many wonder if there was copyright infringement involved, or AI used to create designs.
Back in January 2024 The Pokémon Company addressed the Palworld situation, stating:
“We have received many inquiries regarding another company’s game released in January 2024,” The Pokemon Company wrote. “We have not granted any permission for the use of Pokémon intellectual property or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon. We will continue to cherish and nurture each and every Pokémon and its world, and work to bring the world together through Pokémon in the future.”
Since the initial statement TPCi had been quiet on the situation, with Pocket Pair Inc stating that they had not heard from Nintendo or TPCi, though some who created mods using Pokémon characters were contacted by Nintendo for their immediate removal.
This changed on September 18th 2024, when the lawsuit was announced after what appears to have been months of investigation and analysis. Here is the press release:
“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.”
Interestingly this news comes hot off another Nintendo TPCi lawsuit finding in their favor, after they won a copyright lawsuit against Chinese app Koudaiyaoguai Fuke (also known as Pocket Monster Reissue). This lawsuit was filed in 2021, taking 3 years to come to fruition.
This was a turn-based role-playing game that used Pokémon characters including Ash Ketchum and Pikachu. The Shenzhen Intermediate People’s Court has acknowledged the copyright infringement and ordered one of six companies accused in the lawsuit to pay 107 million Chinese Yuan (approximately $15 million USD) in damages to Nintendo and TPCi. Three of the remaining six companies were ordered to bear joint liability but have filed an appeal that is ongoing.
This Palworld copyright infringement lawsuit is likely to take several years to pan out, and the implications on the gaming world could be quite interesting and have a far reaching impact.
Palworld and Pocket Pair Inc has not yet issued a statement on this lawsuit filing at the time of writing.
UPDATE
Palworld has now issued a statement:
“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.”
