Nintendo sues Palworld dev for patent infringement

After "careful investigation," Nintendo is officially suing Palworld developer Pocketpair...but not for copyright infringement.

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Palworld, dubbed "Pokemon with guns," exploded onto the games market in 2024 with thunders multi-million sales. The early access game managed to accrue 25 million players in a month's time through a combination of full game sales and access via Xbox Game Pass (at the time, Palworld was confirmed to have sold 15 million copies on Steam).

While the indie hit was quite close to copyrighted pocket monsters used by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company in their collective billion-dollar franchise, no lawsuit was filed alleging any kinds of copyright infringement. But Nintendo is nonetheless suing Pocketpair, just not for copyright--Nintendo is going after the indie studio for alleged patent infringement.

While Nintendo published an official press release relating to the matter, the information was decidedly vague. The lawsuit will be held in Japanese courts with Pocketpair facing off against Nintendo.

Nintendo told Stephen Totilo's at Game File that the lawsuit is the result of months of diligent review of Palworld's content.

"We filed the lawsuit at this timing after careful investigation of the content that is the subject of this lawsuit. We will refrain from commenting on topics that relate to the content of the lawsuit."

Check below for the official press release from Nintendo:

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.