Ever since the release of Palworld, the consensus among the those inside – and out, if we’re being perfectly honest – the community have been split between it maker getting sued by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company or not. I’ve opined that, if it were to happen, it would have happened ages ago, back when the first trailers showed up. It looks like I was wrong after all, and the media titans are taking legal action, but not quite for the reason you’d expect.
In a press release, Nintendo says that it, alongside The Pokemon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair. To note though is that the maker of Palworld is being sued not for copyright violations, which would be the case if the complaint was really about the ripping off of creature designs.
For context, generally patents apply to inventions and designs, while copyright applies instead to artistic expressions. There are probably exceptions, and it’s unclear exactly if this is the case for the Nintendo lawsuit. But if I were to hazard a guess, this lawsuit against Pocketpair and Palworld is over the way Pals are caught, using spheres, being too similar to the interaction between Pokemon and Poke Balls.
At any rate, this is an uncommon instance of the Nintendo lawyers being surprisingly sluggish in its pulling of the trigger. You can read the aforementioned press release – which is pretty short in terms of length and details – for yourself by hitting the link below.
(Source: Nintendo)
