For a second there, it looked like Nintendo sort of missed the timing when it came to bringing legal action against the creators of Palworld. Even before the “Pokemon with guns” game launched, gamers and onlookers alike knew it was only a matter of time before the famously litigious gaming giant struck. But Nintendo’s legal arm, occasionally known derisively as the “Nintendo Ninjas”, finally filed a lawsuit this week against the Palworld developer.
Nintendo filed the lawsuit in conjunction with The Pokemon Company on September 18, followed by a press release from the Big N themselves. The company is seeking an injunction, as well as compensation, claiming that Palworld has infringed multiple patents, perhaps most obviously from its multi-billion dollar Pokemon franchise. (The fact it was a patent suit and not a copyright infringement suit was a surprise to some people.)
“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,” Nintendo’s statement says.
Nintendo vs. Palworld
Earlier today, Pocketpair responded to the lawsuit in its own statement, claiming that they are unaware of what patents Nintendo claims Palworld is infringing upon.
“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,” Pocketpair’s statement says. “We will continue improving Palworld and strive to create a game that our fans can be proud of.”
This filing follows months of speculation of “will they or won’t they” when it came to Nintendo filing legal action against the Palworld developer, when the game went into Early Access on Steam on in January. It currently ranks as “Very Positive” on Steam, with over 270,000 user reviews on the PC gaming platform.
All this legal action is happening in the same week where a likely legitimate leak of the console successor to the Nintendo Switch leaked online. Those Ninjas are going to be busy for a while, it seems.
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