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Nintendo's patent lawsuit shows it's 'given up making the case that Palworld's characters are similar to Pokemon's,' analyst explains
Nintendo sued Palworld developer Pocketpair for patent infringement, not copyright infringement, suggesting Nintendo has given up on arguing visual similarities and is focusing on game mechanics protected by patents, potentially impacting the future of creature-collecting games.
Nintendo and the Pokemon Company's lawsuit against fellow creature-collectathon Palworld is for patent infringement, rather than copyright infringement, and one analyst reckons that means Nintendo has "given up" on trying to argue that Pals look too similar to Mons.
Nintendo announced that it was filing a lawsuit against developer Pocketpair earlier this week for infringing "multiple patent rights" in order to "protect the valuable intellectual property that we have built up through many years of hard work." Nintendo had previously said it was looking into potential cases of copyright infringement, right around the time when Palworld became a booming success, so most people speculated that if a legal battle between the two monster-tamers were to start, it would be centered around the creature design's visual similarities. But it seems Nintendo must have come up empty-handed in that regard.
Speaking to Bloomberg, Toyo Securities analyst Hideki Yasuda explains that since the lawsuit is purely to do with patent rights, the Big N isn't going to bother arguing that Anubis looks too much like Lucario, for example.
"Nintendo filing this lawsuit for patent infringement, not copyright infringement, means it has given up making the case that Palworld's characters are similar to Pokemon's," Yasuda says. "But it shows Nintendo has more ways to stop games it doesn't like. The company owns a lot of patents related to basic game mechanics that are used in many titles today."
I won't pretend to be a legal expert, but from what I understand, patents normally protect someone's 'inventions,' like software or machinery, while copyrights usually protect someone's work, like books, music, and art. Details about the case are still under wraps, so no one really knows what Nintendo will argue. Maybe they'll say the Pal-catching balls are too alike to Poke Balls, or maybe they have beef with something as simple as UI prompts. It could be anything, but we won't find out for a while.