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Earlier this week, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, in which the company has a stake, announced that they would Manufacturer of Palworlda survival crafting MMO that exploded onto Steam and Xbox earlier this year. The companies accused Pocketpair, the studio behind the overnight launch of “Pokemon with weapons” sensation, the patent infringement. Although neither party has disclosed exactly which elements Palworld accused of copying, experts have begun to look into the Pokemon Mechanics that could be at the center of the dispute.
“This action seeks an injunction against the infringement and damages on the grounds that Palworlda game developed and published by the defendant, infringes several patent rights”, Nintendo announced on 18 SeptemberPocketpair responded the next day. “At this time, we are not aware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing, nor have we been informed of such details,” the company wrote. “It is truly unfortunate that this lawsuit will force us to spend a lot of time on matters that have nothing to do with game development.”
It could take weeks before the exact allegations of patent infringement are laid out by Nintendo in subsequent filings, but in the meantime, new reports and analysis have begun to shed some light on the company’s main line of attack and why it decided to pursue Pocketpair in the first place. While the early online controversy surrounding PalworldSimilarity to Pokemon had to do with the creature designs, the lawsuit Nintendo filed eight months later revolves around what players actually do in the game.
One of these ways is to throw a spherical object at fantastic creatures to capture and store them. Nintendo has a patent for a version of this mechanic, as recently reported by Game file. If you delve into the details, igamesnews broke the precise language What this patent, which was filed in 2021 and approved only last year, specifically covers:
In a first mode, a target direction in a virtual space is determined based on a second operation input, and a player character is caused to throw in the target direction an object that affects a field character arranged on a field in the virtual space based on a third operation input. In a second mode, the target direction is determined based on the second operation input, and the player character is caused to throw in the target direction a combat character that fights based on the third operation input.
As you can see, it’s not simply about throwing one thing at another to trap it inside, but about a specific sequence of events based on certain inputs. We don’t yet know if this is one of the actual patents at issue in Nintendo’s lawsuit, or how a court will rule if it is. (The case was filed in Japan.) But if so, the timing could be narrowly in the Mario maker’s favor. Why was the patent so new when Pokémon has been around for decades? Probably because it didn’t come out until 2022. Pokémon Legends: Arceus that a game actually involved players catching Pokémon with Poké Balls in 3D spaces like this one.
Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara recently said Yahoo!according to a Translation of Automaton Westthat Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed additional “partial patents” based on the above patent earlier this year and requested expedited review, with approval for one of those patents coming just last month. Kurihara suggested this may have been part of a strategy to finalize his patent language before taking legal action against Pocketpair for patent infringement.
This is not the first time Nintendo has pursued another Japanese video game company for patent infringement. Back in 2017took action against the mobile studio Colopl because of its Japanese smartphone game White Cat Project for alleged patent infringements in connection with “special technologies for operating a joystick via a touch panel”. The two sides reached an agreementColopl paid Nintendo around $20 million. Industry analyst Serkan Toto, who heads the consulting firm Kantan Games, referred to this example in a Interview this week with 404 Media.
“First of all, this lawsuit is being filed under Japanese law, so it has nothing to do with US, UK or EU law,” he said. “And secondly, I think Nintendo has taken the time to really build the case, to outline everything, including the counterarguments that the other side might make in a lawsuit and how to counter them and make absolutely sure that they believe they will win before they file the lawsuit.”
Toto painted a rather bleak picture of Pocketpair’s chances of winning against Nintendo, given its track record, and suggested that the timing of the lawsuit could be related to the Tokyo Game Show. Pocketpair was set to release a PlayStation 5 version of Palworld Only months ago, Sony entered into a joint venture with Sony to expand and market the intellectual property. Sony has not yet commented on the lawsuit.
“You can bet Nintendo hates this company, and they couldn’t find an approach to the character designs,” Toto said. “That’s why they don’t mention them in their press release. So they have these technical peculiarities.” He added that he believes the goal is to hurt Pocketpair financially. It’s unclear exactly how much the game has grossed so far, but it has already had 19 million players shortly after its release, including via Game Pass as part of a deal with Microsoft.
We’ll see what ultimately comes out when Nintendo makes its lawsuit against Pocketpair public. In the meantime, the company is keeping its cards close to its chest. “We filed the lawsuit at this time after carefully examining the content that is the subject of this lawsuit,” it said in a statement. “We will refrain from commenting on matters related to the content of the lawsuit.”
