As we reported earlier this morning, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo have filed a lawsuit against Japanese studio Pocketpair for misuse of the company’s Palworld patents. In a very calculated move (which has likely been brewing since shortly after the game’s release earlier this year), both companies put aside the issue of the Pals’ design similarities to Pokémon, and chose to attack on the playable design front. But it looks like Pocket Pair will put up a fight.
The studio has just released a statement on Discord saying that they will be taking Nintendo to court, on their behalf and “for the future of indie development”. They also thank fans for their support since the news broke. You can read the full statement below.
“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.”
There’s no doubt that Palworld was the big surprise of early 2024, but Nintendo rarely starts a lawsuit without having its cards well thought out to make the move. We will be following this whole process closely.