According to Palworld developer Pocketpair Inc., while they have officially received notice regarding the patent infringement lawsuit filed against them by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, they have not been made aware of the “specific patents” they have allegedly violated.
Submitted by the Pokémon brand co-owners to the Tokyo District Court on September 18th, said 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.”
Notably, at the time of their lawsuit’s announcement, neither Nintendo nor The Pokémon Company had publicly detailed just which patents they believed were infringed by Pocketpair Inc’s own monster-catching title.
And according to the developer themselves, it seems not even they have been made privy to this information.
Responding to the lawsuit in a September 19th news update made to their official company website, Pocketpair Inc detailed, “Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement” and noted that while they had “received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement,” they were conversely “unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.”
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“Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo,” wrote the developer. “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,” they added. “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.”
While no official details regarding the infringed patents are currently available, speculation suggests that the forthcoming legal proceedings will at the very least revolve around Palworld‘s Pal Sphere mechanic, where much like in Pokémon players must use a small, ball-shaped containment apparatus to capture and contain a given Pal.
