Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair over Palworld, but one expert isn’t sure the Mario maker has enough to win.
Palworld was criticized long before it launched for its designs that closely resembled Pokemon, and to be honest, that’s fair. There were a lot of very questionable designs, but none of them seemed to cross any copyright lines from the start. Nintendo may have felt that way, as it has filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, but specifically over patents, not any of Palworld’s Pal designs. Since the lawsuit was just filed, it will take some time to know the outcome, but former Blizzard consultant and now-defunct FOSS Patents blogger Florian Mueller shared his thoughts on this “tricky” situation.
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“It doesn’t look like they’re suing over the rights to the creation of Palworld’s character look, even though that seemed to be their initial concern,” Mueller wrote. “Patents cover *technical* inventions, with the exception of design patents in the US. In Japan, they don’t seem to call design rights ‘patents,’ which means they must be suing over software patents that have nothing to do with Palworld’s look. Those patents are probably 3D image rendering patents. These technologies can be used to make something that looks like Pokémon, but they can also be used to make something that looks like Warcraft.”
“It’s unlikely that Nintendo has any valid patents (i.e. patents that Pocketpair couldn’t defeat in court) that would be strong enough to prevent Pocketpair from making Palworld. Such patents can usually be circumvented. You can get the same (or nearly the same) effect using different techniques.”
Mueller goes on to point out that small and young companies like Pocketpair typically don’t have any patents they can countersue, but developers may be able to obtain some to do so. The patent expert also goes on to point out that the Japanese patent is only valid in Japan, so even if Nintendo wins, Pocketpair could still potentially continue to sell Palworld in other regions (but also points out that Nintendo may be preparing further upgrades).
However, this does take a long time to resolve, as Mueller said he thinks it’s “more likely to take five years than it will be resolved in the first year,” so for now you can get on with your game of Pokémon with guns.
