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

News
By published

"This is not a simple 'pay me a million' patent suit"

Palworld
(Image credit: Pocketpair)

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."

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."

Nintendo's Pokeball patent could be at the heart of its Palworld lawsuit, and judging by a 29-year-old precedent it could change monster-collecting RPGs for decades.

Catherine Lewis
Catherine Lewis
Deputy News Editor

I'm GamesRadar+'s Deputy News Editor, working alongside the rest of the news team to deliver cool gaming stories that we love. After spending more hours than I can count filling The University of Sheffield's student newspaper with Pokemon and indie game content, and picking up a degree in Journalism Studies, I started my career at GAMINGbible where I worked as a journalist for over a year and a half. I then became TechRadar Gaming's news writer, where I sourced stories and wrote about all sorts of intriguing topics. In my spare time, you're sure to find me on my Nintendo Switch or PS5 playing through story-driven RPGs like Xenoblade Chronicles and Persona 5 Royal, nuzlocking old Pokemon games, or going for a Victory Royale in Fortnite.