Nintendo has announced that they’ve filed a lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocket Pair.

In a brief announcement, Nintendo claims that Palworld “infringes multiple patent rights” held by Nintendo, though no examples are provided in the announcement.

[任天堂HP]ニュースリリース「株式会社ポケットペアに対する特許権侵害訴訟の提起について」を掲載しました。https://t.co/VmxFKYyV5g

— 任天堂株式会社（企業広報・IR） (@NintendoCoLtd) September 18, 2024

Nintendo Co., Ltd. (HQ: Kyoto, Minami-ku, Japan; Representative Director and President: Shuntaro Furukawa, “Nintendo” hereafter), together with The Pokémon Company, filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. (HQ: 2-10-2 Higashigotanda, Shinagawa-ku, Tokyo, “Defendant” hereafter) on September 18, 2024.

This lawsuit seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and released by the Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.

Nintendo will continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.

It’s foolish not to admit that Palworld is at least somewhat derivative of Pokemon, but until now Nintendo has only gone after modders (as usual) who added characters from the Nintendo Franchise into Palworld.

For its part, Palworld has seemed to distance itself from Pokemon and even during the game’s unprecedented success, fans insisted that while it may border parody, it doesn’t appear to lift anything directly from Pokemon. Fans are also confused as to why Nintendo waited so long to intervene, given that Palworld released about 8 months ago, and was announced 3 years ago. Fans have gone on to accuse Nintendo of cynically waiting until Pocket Pair made money off of Palworld to seek damages, or of the lawsuit being a petty tactic to compensate for the lack of quality mainline Pokemon games in recent years.

Your just being petty because you haven't made an innovative Pokémon in decades. Most of your original Pokémon fans are in their 20's to 40's now, yet you've done nothing in these games to cater this player base. Palworld did and capitalized on a community you neglected.

— Theron Alvord (@TheronAlvord) September 19, 2024

Palworld recently celebrated its success and announced that the game would not be pivoting to a free-to-lay or “games as a service” model, citing its rich singleplayer experience.