In 2024, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the developer of Palworld, claiming patent infringement. Community manager John Buckley expressed the team's surprise at the lawsuit, noting that they had conducted legal checks to avoid such risks. The lawsuit revolves around three specific Japanese patents related to game mechanics, not directly to the creatures in Palworld. Following the lawsuit, Pocketpair had to make significant adjustments to their launch plans, including scaling down preparations for an upcoming PlayStation release and increasing security measures.
"When the lawsuit was announced we were like, 'What?' And we went back to the lawyers, and the lawyers contacted the courts and asked, 'What's going on?' and that's when we realized it was patents they were going for."
"It changed a lot of things for us. We were just about to release the PlayStation version, we were just about to go to Tokyo Game Show, so obviously we had to scale back a little bit and hire security guards and stuff like that."
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