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IP expert says Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit is 'more likely' to take 5 years than to finish in 1, but Pocketpair can 'easily' afford the legal battle
Nintendo and The Pokemon Company have filed a lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair for alleged patent infringement, with experts predicting a long legal battle but also suggesting that Pocketpair can afford to defend itself. The lawsuit could have significant implications for the future of monster-collecting RPGs.
One IP expert predicts that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company's lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair is "more likely to last five years" than be settled in just one, but he's also confident that the indie survival game studio can "easily" afford the battle to come.
Posting on Twitter, former Blizzard consultant Florian Mueller claims that the lawsuit probably won't have a "simple" settlement, and that it could go on for some time. "Nintendo v. [Pocketpair] looks to me like a dispute that is more likely to last five years than to be settled during the first year," Mueller says. "In fact, it could be that Nintendo actually wants to see it through and wants it to take long. This is not a simple 'pay me a million' patent suit."
Later down in the thread, Mueller says that he doesn't expect that Pocketpair will struggle with the costs of the battle, claiming that the studio "can afford that. Easily." He adds that "Pocketpair can defend," and: "This is not like Epic v. Apple and Google costing hundreds of millions."
Right now, it's hard to know one way or another where the legal battle will end up. The lawsuit alleges that Pocketpair's game "infringes multiple patents," but Nintendo hasn't publicly revealed which patents these are. Speaking to GamesRadar+, however, analyst Serkan Toto tells us that Nintendo has "a very, very strong legal team that is feared in the Japanese gaming industry," and "looking at the track record, it's highly likely that they win."
For now, we'll just have to wait and see, but if what Mueller predicts is true about the length of the battle, it could be quite some time before we know the result. Publicly responding to the news yesterday, Pocketpair said "we will do our utmost for our fans, and to ensure that indie game developers are not hindered or discouraged from pursuing their creative ideas."