Palworld Devs Argue That Nintendo Patents Are Invalid In Legal Response

Last year, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in Japan against Palworld developer Pocketpair, alleging that their game had violated three of Nintendo’s patents.

A new update regarding the suit has now surfaced online, courtesy of outlet Gamesfray. The publication managed to send a Japanese lawyer specializing in patents to head down to the Tokyo District Court to access the case file, uncovering how Pocketpair intends to fight against Nintendo’s claims.

Firstly, Pocketpair is arguing that Nintendo’s patents are invalid. Using the patent of capturing creatures as an example, they point to many games with similar creature-catching mechanics that were released before Nintendo’s patents were filed. This includes Palworld‘s primary inspiration ARK: Survival Evolved, games from other developers like Octopath Traveler and Rune Factory 5, and even Nintendo’s own Pokemon games and Pikmin 3. If the patents are deemed invalid by the judge, then the core of Nintendo’s case would fall flat.

Secondly, even if the patents are deemed valid, Pocketpair argues that they have not infringed on any of them. Pocketpair has specific arguments of non-infringement for each of the patents Nintendo is using in their lawsuit, primarily related to differences in game genre as well as attacks on the vague wording of the patents themselves. The full breakdown can be found in Section 3 of Gamesfray’s article here.

At the time of this writing, we have yet to hear an official verdict regarding the lawsuit, suggesting that the battle is still ongoing. Nintendo will not only have to prove to the judge that their patents are valid, but that Pocketpair is also infringing upon all three of them. Pocketpair faces an injunction against Palworld and a payment of 10 million yen in damages to Nintendo and The Pokemon Company if the lawsuit is ultimately successful.

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