Nintendo's lawsuit against Pocketpair is unlikely to do any major damage to the Palworld developer, a patent expert told Game Rant. But Pocketpair still seems to be facing a long and arduous legal battle against Nintendo.
Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed a joint lawsuit against the Palworld developer on September 18. The complaint, submitted in the Tokyo District Court, alleges that Pocketpair's hit survival crafting game infringes on a number of their patents. The details of the lawsuit have yet to be made public.
Reflecting on this turn of events, veteran patent analyst Florian Mueller told Game Rant that he doesn't expect the case to have international consequences. "At most, [Nintendo] will do some damage in Japan, but probably not outside," he opined. The first of these consequences might have already materialized on September 24, when Palworld was shadow-dropped for the PS5 in 68 countries, but not Japan. A recent tweet from Pocketpair saw the company acknowledge that the PlayStation version of the game currently lacks a release date for its home market, albeit without outright stating that Nintendo's lawsuit is the reason for this.
Japanese IP attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara has previously pointed to a Nintendo patent...
