Nintendo and The Pokémon Company suing Palworld creator ...

Dubbed “Pokemon with guns” by many before it officially launched earlier this year, Palworld was a game that piqued the interest of a lot of gamers. It also piqued the interest of The Pokémon Company, which announced that it would be investigating the game and its creator Pocketpair in January of this year.

Now several months later, both Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have formally announced that a lawsuit has been filed against the Palworld creator.

While the full details of the lawsuit have not been shared, a summary published by Nintendo on its press site notes that Pocketpair, Inc. has infringed “multiple patent rights” in the creation of the game.

“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,” a statement from Nintendo published this week reads.

“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,” it continued.

It remains to be seen what the fate of Palworld will be, or whether courts will indeed find there to be enough grounds to sue Pocketpair, as Engadget cites, the company’s CEO Takuro Mizobe claims that the game has “cleared legal reviews”.

Either way it will be interesting to see whether Pocketpair is found to be guilty of any wrongdoing, especially given how litigious Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are about their IPs.