Nintendo, Pokemon file lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair

September 18: Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair – the studio known for Palworld – together with The Pokemon Company.

Those that have been keeping up with Palworld since it burst onto the scene this year may not be overly surprised by the news. The lawsuit is seeking “injunction against infringement and compensation for damages”. Nintendo and The Pokemon Company believe that Palworld “infringes multiple patent rights.”

The full announcement about the Nintendo / Pokemon lawsuit for Pocketpair and Palworld is as follows:

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.

At the start of the year, The Pokemon Company issued a statement after there was much discussion surrounding Palworld and how it closely resembles Pokemon in some aspects. While Palworld wasn’t specifically mentioned, it was clear what that response was for. The statement, which you can read in full here, mentioned that The Pokemon Company would “investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights”. Now we’re seeing the result of that, which is a lawsuit Nintendo and Pokemon are pursuing.

Since this is just happening now, it’s unclear what the end result will be. We’ll keep you updated with any further developments as they happen.

September 19: Pocketpair has now issued its own statement about the situation. We’ve included it below.

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.