The Japanese team behind Palworld, PocketPair, is working on its defense strategy against Nintendo‘s accusations in the ongoing lawsuit. They are focusing on denying the validity and infringement of the patents that Nintendo has filed concerning Pokémon, to defend their position.
As we’ve seen, the long-awaited lawsuit against PocketPair has finally arrived for Palworld, but it doesn’t focus on more obvious issues like the design of certain creatures, where it would be hard to fight. Instead, the issue centers on patents related to gameplay that Nintendo has registered, which the team is accused of violating.
These patents were registered recently, though some were registered before Palworld was released, and their registration has sparked some debate. Now, however, the issue has moved to the legal arena.
The “Prior Art” Principle and Other Issues
As reported by Games Frey (thanks Insider-Gaming), it appears that PocketPair is developing a defense strategy based first on the invalidity of Nintendo’s patents and then arguing that Palworld does not infringe on these patents. This forms a sort of two-pronged defense.
The question about the validity of the patents is particularly interesting. PocketPair’s counter-argument is based on the existence of earlier games that use the same mechanics that Nintendo has patented.
This is based on the “prior art” principle, which refers to any publicly available knowledge before a patent application is filed. Games like Rune Factory 5, Titanfall 2, and Pikmin 3 Deluxe are cited as examples where players can “perform an action to release or capture a creature, or hit in a direction by pressing a button,” which concerns one of the patents Nintendo has filed.
Other titles, like ARK, are considered because they allow players to change mounts, as well as ArcheAge and Riders of Icarus, which were released before Nintendo filed their patent in this area.
If these arguments don’t work, PocketPair plans to argue that Palworld does not infringe on Nintendo’s patents, pointing out the vagueness of the terminology used in these documents. Terms like “products that work on computers” or “computer programs” are too broad and unclear to be understood precisely, and Palworld and Pokémon don’t belong to the same genre of video games.
