Late Wednesday, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company announced that they were suing Palworld’s Pocketpair for patent infringement, which drew a swift response that the developer had no idea what they were referring to at all.
Now, it seems that Nintendo is powering up a Death Star laser that is almost certainly not going to miss, no matter what these patents turn out to be or how ridiculous they seem. Why?
Well, the common theory based on uh, reality, is that Nintendo would almost certainly not be filing a lawsuit like this unless they believed they had a rock solid case with little-to-no chance of losing. Again, a patent filing would have nothing to do with the aesthetic nature of Pals looking too similar to Pokémon, as Pokémon itself has been “inspired” by other monster designs over the years, certainly.
But Nintendo owns a vast network of patents of all stripes, and some digging has turned up ones filed in recent years that appears to focus on the idea of aiming and throwing balls to catch monsters in a landscape. The application was granted in Japan, though we do not know if this specific patent is the center of the case. It could be almost anything, given the sheer range of patents Nintendo has.
In an interview with Serkan Toto on 404 Media, the CEO of a Japanese consulting firm, Kantan Games, he has dire predictions for Palworld’s chances here given Nintendo’s history with this sort of thing:
“Nintendo has, as I mentioned in my tweet, a legendary track record. I think they never lost a lawsuit that they initiated themselves.”
He goes on to talk about how Nintendo sued an extremely popular mobile game in Japan, White Cat Project, which wasn’t copying any specific game, but they showed up claiming six patent violations, one of which included “a confirmation screen after sleep mode.” As in, when a device wakes up and it asks you if you want to resume. Nintendo owns that concept. Another was about a character hiding behind a tree and creating a shadow so you know where that character is. Seriously.
That resulted in a $20 million settlement and licensing fees paid to Nintendo. It didn’t shut the game down, but it’s clear that Palworld has probably been snagged in some web of Nintendo patents they may not have even known existed, and many may be even more obscure than “throwing a ball to catch a monster” which I don’t think anyone knew Nintendo even apparently owned until this week.
We have no idea what the end result of this would be if Nintendo won, which may in fact be when Nintendo wins, given its legal past. Palworld reportedly earned $500 million by March 2024, so some measure of a not-horrific settlement could allow them to stay alive, though that would depend on what licensing fees they might need to pay to Nintendo. Plus, the legal fees and time it will take to litigate this.
Nintendo looks terrible in this situation, like a common patent troll who is grabbing at a successful game for what is very likely going to be obscure patents that may end up sounding ridiculous. This isn’t going to be Palworld stealing code or assets. Maybe they showed someone’s shadow behind a tree.
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