Palworld developer Pocket Pair has released a statement in response to Nintendo’s lawsuit against the company. The company is “unaware” of what patents they are accused of possibly infringing.

You can read the full statement below.

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.

Yesterday, Nintendo announced they filed a lawsuit against Palworld for violating the company’s patents, this is different from trademark or copyright and implies that Nintendo is looking at the mechanics of Palworld rather than the characters or design.

One X (formerly Twitter) user noted that The Pokemon Company recently filed a patent which appears to be for the mechanics behind capturing monsters in a Pokeball-like object. However this particular patent was filed in May 2024, months after the initial release of Palworld.

nintendo are so infuriated palworld wasn't able to be charged on design copyright grounds, they created a patent for the game mechanic "pointing & aiming an item for launch" specifically just to sue palworld. nintendo fans are so stupid they think it's for trademark infringement https://t.co/9MKFNFPIiM pic.twitter.com/DDMBi4z94z

— god's little reject (@destructionset) September 19, 2024

We can’t know for certain if this is the specific patent Nintendo is referring today, as The Pokemon Company holds dozens of patents for game mechanics, this is just one example.