Pocketpair has responded to the lawsuit filed against it by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company. The studio that developed Palworld, the game at the heart of the suit, issued a statement early this morning saying it doesn’t know what patents it violated. “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,” the statement read.
According to Nintendo’s press release, the reason for the lawsuit has to do with Pocketpair allegedly infringing on multiple as yet undisclosed patents. The details of the lawsuit have not yet been made public, so we do not yet know which patents and according to Pocketpair’s statement, it doesn’t know either.
The news broke last night that Nintendo and TPC were suing the makers of Palworld — an open world survival crafting game that features a collection of compaéion monsters players can catch and battle. Since its release in January, the game became an instant hit racking up over 10 million in copies sold and breaking Steam concurrent player records within its first few weeks. Almost immediately, people noticed striking similarities between Palworld’s “pals” and pokémon from their looks down to their extraordinarily similar character models.
Though Nintendo’s not going after Pocketpair because lamballs look uncomfortably similar to wooloos, we do know the company is famously litigious in protecting its brand. Shortly after Palworld’s release, TPC ordered a programmer to take down a video that featured a mod of Palworld that replaced all the pals with pokémon. It also issued a statement saying it was aware of Palworld — although the statement did not refer to the game by name — and would be investigating the game to, “take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon.” Looks like the company found something.