Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair over the Palworld issue, but one expert isn’t sure the Mario maker has what it takes to win.
Palworld was criticized for its very Pokemon-like design long before it came out, and honestly, that’s fair. There are a lot of very questionable designs, but none of them seem to have crossed any copyright lines in the first place. Nintendo may end up feeling that way too, as the company has filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, but specifically regarding the patent, not any of Palworld’s Pal designs. Since the lawsuit was just filed, it will be some time before the outcome becomes clear, but Florian Mueller, a former Blizzard consultant and author of the now-defunct FOSS Patents blog, shared his thoughts on the “tricky” situation .
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“It does not appear that they are suing over the creative rights to the appearance of Palworld characters, even though that was their initial concern,” Mueller wrote. “The patents cover *technical* inventions, with the exception of U.S. design patents. In Japan, they do not appear to have Not calling the design rights “patented,” which means they have to sue over software patents that have nothing to do with Palworld’s appearance, for example, the technology that can be used to make things look like Pokémon, or things that look like Pokémon. Something like Warcraft.
“It’s unlikely that Nintendo has any valid patents (i.e. patents that Pocketpair can’t defeat in court) that are strong enough to prevent Pocketpair from making Palworld. Such patents can usually be worked around. You can get the same (or nearly) patents. “Use different techniques to achieve the same effect. ”
Mueller went on to point out that small, young companies like Pocketpair typically don’t have any patents to countersuit, but it’s possible developers could obtain some to do so. The patent expert also pointed out that the Japanese patent is only valid in Japan, so even if Nintendo wins, Pocketpair may still continue to sell Palworld in other regions (but also noted that Nintendo may be preparing further upgrades).
This does take a long time to resolve, though, and as Mueller shared, he thinks it’s “more likely to be resolved than it was in year one,” so for now you can keep playing your Pokemon games with guns.
