Nintendo and The Pokemon Company file lawsuit against Pocketpair for Palworld [Update]

Nintendo, together with The Pokemon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair on September 18 seeking an infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that the Pocketpair-developed Palworld infringes multiple patent rights, the company announced.

Nintendo did not specify which patent rights Palworld infringes, but said that it will continue to take necessary actions against the infringement of its intellectual property rights to protect the properties it has established over the years.

Update 4:55 a.m.: Pocketpair has issued the following response:

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.