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Pocketpair
The possibility of Nintendo suing Palworld's developer Pocketpair has been there since the very beginning. While The Pokémon Company vowed to investigate the Pal game over possible intellectual property rights infringements back in January, nothing came out of it, and the studio seems to have decided to change tactics and target patents instead.
On September 18, Nintendo filed a lawsuit accusing Pocketpair of patent infringement but didn't elaborate on what exactly the company had allegedly stolen.
Pocketpair has responded to the suit on X/Twitter, saying it is "unaware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing upon, and we have not been notified of such details."
Honestly, there can be a bunch of stuff Nintendo doesn't appreciate Pocketpair doing, but after checking the big company's patents, PC Gamer believes the bone of contention could be ball-throwing.
The outlet thinks the US patent 20230191255 covers the issue. It says Nintendo has the rights to the characters catching and throwing other characters mechanic.
"Thus, by switching between the first mode and the second mode, the player character can be caused to perform different actions, i.e., an action of launching, at a field character as a target on a field, an item that affects the field character, and an action of launching a fighting character that fights against a field character on a field, according to an operation input for causing the player character to perform a launching action in the direction indicated by an aiming point."
Long and complicated story short, Nintendo patented throwing Poké Balls. In Palworld, you also catch Pals using a round object called a Pal Sphere and then release them to fight or work for you. This does sound like something Nintendo could latch on to, so Pocketpair should find a good lawyer. PC Gamer says that only 21% of claims brought before the Tokyo and Osaka District Courts and weren't resolved in settlements were upheld, so the smaller company has a fighting chance.
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