Nintendo has yet to tell Pocket Pair which patents it ‘infringed’

In a blog post simply titled ‘Regarding the Lawsuit', Pocket Pair has publicly acknowledged the pending lawsuit against the company, brought forward by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. While Both parties claim Pocket Pair has infringed on patents, so far, no specific examples of patent infringement have been supplied.

“Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement”, Pocket Pair writes. “We have received notice of this lawsuit and will begin the appropriate legal proceedings and investigations into the claims of patent infringement. At this moment, we are unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details.”

Pocket Pair is a small studio, based in Tokyo, Japan, so it would seem that this lawsuit was filed there simply due to the location of both Nintendo and Pocket Pair, rather than as a tactical manoeuvre due to Japan's stricter copyright laws. The studio acknowledges that this lawsuit will force the team to “allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development”.

However, Pocket Pair also says that it will do its “utmost” to keep game updates coming for fans of Palworld, a title that garnered tens of millions of players at launch, and is due to get another influx soon thanks to the pending launch of a PS5 version of the game.

KitGuru Says: As the studio wasn't sued prior to Palworld's release, I was of the mind that Nintendo had let this go, but that turns out to not be the case. From the sounds of it, the Palworld team is equally surprised to see the lawsuit at this stage.

Become a Patron!