Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have filed a lawsuit in a Tokyo District Court against Japanese video game studio Pocketpair, claiming that their parody shooter Palworld is in violation of intellectual property rights.
Palworld was released in January. The Pokemon Company said at the time that it was researching the game, which uses characters and settings similar to those in the Pokemon universe, but with a more violent and irreverent tone.
After its debut, Palworld became a huge hit on the PC platform Steam and on Xbox, In the first month, approximately 25 million copies were soldaccording to Statista. Fans of the game quickly created mods for Palworld that replaced by real Pokémon for the characters in the game.
The Pokémon Company said in january“We have not granted permission for the use of any Pokémon intellectual property or assets in that game. We intend to investigate and take appropriate action to address any actions that infringe on intellectual property rights related to Pokémon.”
Nintendo said on Thursday that the new lawsuit “seeks an injunction against infringement and damages on the grounds that Palworld, a game developed and published by Defendant, infringes multiple patent rights.”
In response to this, Pocketpair said It has not received official notice of the lawsuit and does not yet know which patents are involved. The company said in its statement: “It is truly unfortunate that we are forced to spend a significant amount of time on matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit. However, we will do our utmost for our fans and ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas.”
Nintendo and The Pokemon Company did not respond to requests for further comment on the lawsuit.
