Palworld developer, Pocketpair, has responded to Nintendo’s lawsuit over patent infringement

Last night, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company released a joint statement in which they announced their decision to move ahead with legal action against Palworld and its developer, Pocketpair. While the news was a surprise to many, it appears as though it was also unexpected by the Tokyo-based developer of the viral survival game.

As the owners and managers of Pokémon declared in their announcement, a lawsuit has been filed in the Tokyo District Court that claims Palworld “infringes multiple patent rights.” However, no details other than that were revealed to the public. Today, Pocketpair released a statement on its social media accounts where they said they would investigate said claims, but that they’re not aware of the specific patents they have been accused of infringing upon.

The full statement by the small developer reads as follows:

“Regarding the Lawsuit

Yesterday, a lawsuit was filed against our company for patent infringement.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.

Pocketpair is a small indie game company based in Tokyo. Our goal as a company has always been to create fun games. We will continue to pursue this goal because we know that our games bring joy to millions of gamers around the world. Palworld was a surprise success this year, both for gamers and for us. We were blown away by the amazing response to the game and have been working hard to make it even better for our fans. We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.

It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to allocate significant time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit. However, we will do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas. We apologize to our fans and supporters for any worry or discomfort that this news has caused. As always, thank you for your continued support of Palworld and Pocketpair.”

Nintendo’s lawsuit took a long time to materialize

This move to legal action comes very much unannounced, but it’s not a complete surprise. The last thing that was said about the situation was back at the end of January, when The Pokémon Company acknowledge the complaints of many fans and stated that they “have not granted any permission for the use of Pokémon intellectual property or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon.”

Since then, Pocketpair has continued to work on content updates for Palworld, which while it didn’t maintain the explosive numbers it launched with, has continued to do extremely well throughout its time as an Early Access title.

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