Nintendo lawsuit could see Palworld reworked or removed and is an investment in "unspoken fear," lawyer says: "Don’t cross us and we won’t do it to you"
Sep. 22, 2024An injunction against Palworld could have multiple effects
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Nintendo’s patent lawsuit against Palworldhas been interpreted differently by a range of law and industry experts, with someexpecting the ensuing legal battle to run long, some arguing thatNintendo wouldn’t make a move unless it was sureit could win in court, andothers reckoning this may be a reachfor the company’s well-known legal team.
Haley MacLean, a lawyer atVoyer Lawwho specializes in video games, says it’s currently difficult to predict the effects of the suit since we don’t even know the patents in question, thoughthere’s fair speculation that a Pokeball-related patent is in the mix, but she sees room for outcomes including reworks to Palworld’s mechanics and the survival game being temporarily or permanently removed from stores.
Speaking with GamesRadar+, MacLean unpacks Nintendo’s terse statement revealing the lawsuit. “For Japan (and a lot of other jurisdictions too), patent infringement is the unauthorized commercial workings of a third party of a [claimed] invention,” she explains. “The scope of whatever is protected under the patent(s) determines the consideration for whether an act then constitutes infringement against said scope. There is both direct infringement, and indirect infringement as well. Without getting overly complicated, Nintendo has to prove Pocketpair’s commercial actions infringed on their patent(s) and they did not give them consent to do so.”
Nintendo claims Palworld likewise infringes on “multiple” patents, and MacLean stresses that the company has “dozens and dozens of patents not just on game mechanics but game menu functionality, touch screen functionality, controller functionality, console functionality” and more. If Nintendo can successfully argue that Palworld is using its ideas without consent, Pocketpair could end up facing a range of changes, penalties, or other requirements. As a reminder, Nintendo’s initial post reads:
“The lawsuit seeks an injunction against the defendants and compensation for damages, alleging that the game ‘Palworld’ developed and sold by the defendants infringes multiple patents.”
Some experts expect the case to be settled out of court with a lump sum settlement, and likely a sizable one given Palworld’s success and Pocketpair’s deepened pockets. “Legal game issues so often get settled outside of court, but a prediction to what that settlement might look like and the amount it might be is something no one person could determine without having access to all the facts of the issues,” MacLean says.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
She has an easier time envisioning outcomes such as: “(1) Pocketpair not being allowed to re-release in certain jurisdictions, (2) Pocketpair having to pay licensing fees and getting to keep any infringing mechanics (3) Pocketpair having to completely remove the patented mechanics from Palworld and relaunch (4) injunction periods where Palworld has to be removed from all stores for a period of time, etc.” If such an injunction were enforced, it may only be temporary and “might only be for certain jurisdictions.” But naturally, “Nintendo would try and expand that injunction as wide as possible while Pocketpair would try to limit it as much as possible.”
MacLean agrees with the sentiment thatPalworld’s global success, as well as its widely reported multiplatform and multimedia and merchandising efforts, would’ve chummed the waters and helped push Nintendo to take action. Famously litigious as it is, it wouldn’t go after just anyone in court. “Just look at Etsy. Thousands upon thousands of Pokémon keychains, t-shirts and figures made without consent from Nintendo, but the legal costs to send a letter to all of those persons likely wouldn’t be worth it financially for them.”
For Nintendo, there’s also another benefit to this type of legal action, MacLean adds. “Nintendo would also be viewing enforcements like these as a sort of investment in imposing an unspoken fear of retribution in the marketplace for other companies, as in, ‘Look what we did to this guy, don’t cross us and we won’t do it to you too.' Even if they don’t intend to enforce these patents ever again, the fear would still be there to deter other companies.”
Palworld developer responds to Nintendo lawsuit, says “we will do our utmost” to ensure that indie devs “are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.”
Five years later, PUBG creator PlayerUnknown finally reveals his massive open-world survival game projects, aiming for “realistic worlds thousands of kilometers wide” across three games
Horizon Zero Dawn-style open-world survival game previously blasted as “shameless” seemingly gets a thumbs up from Sony as it confirms a PS5 release
After 9 hours, I can’t bear to leave The Vatican in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
