Pocketpair goes on to say that Palworld has been claimed to infringe on three patents held by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company and that part of the damage is required as compensation.
The first patent is one that most had guessed to be part of the case, as 7545191 refers to the process of capturing and befriending Pokemon, which Palworld apes with its Pal Spheres. The other two patents that are included in the lawsuit, 7493117 and 7528390 haven’t been found and detailed just yet, but they’re likely also mechanics in Pokemon games that are replicated in Palworld.
Even as a dedicated pokemon fan that hasn’t played Palworld (the butchering mechanics don’t really appeal to me)…
I really hope Nintendo loses this, and loses it HARD. I think that some actual competition would be really healthy for the pokemon franchise, giving them an actual impetus to make sure their games are high-quality and well-supported and don’t pursue serious anti-consumer practices.
Godspeed, Palworld. Counting on you.
The unfortunate part is that Nintendo is likely going to win it. It’s a Japanese company, in Japanese court, and the courts are hilariously biased in favor of Japanese companies. Nintendo has literally never lost a lawsuit in Japan against a foreign defendant, because the Japanese courts are set up to trust Japanese claimants more than foreigners by default.
Japan has a lot of cute media and a reputation for being polite, but the harsh reality is that the country is one of the most racist in the world. They get away with it because the culture is built upon being polite. But under that polite exterior, there is a lot of overt racism. Japan is one of the most homogenous populations in the world, with 99.8% of the population being native Japanese. That remaining 0.2% includes all of the tourists, visa holders, immigrants, half-Japanese children, etc… Japan has a saying, which roughly translates to “the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.” In a society that is focused on blending in, immigrants stick out.
Imagine how bad the White Power rhetoric would be if America were 99.8% white, and that other 0.2% (not 2%. Two tenths of 1%) of non-white people included tourists, immigrants, and naturalized citizens. In a packed 20,000 person stadium, that would only be 40 non-white people in the crowd.
I hadn’t realized the court was within Japan. Does Palworld conduct business inside the country? I’d think if it was never released there, Japan would have no basis to pull them into a foreign case.
Pocketpair (Palworld dev) is also a Japanese company.
Ðı aṙ’n letıŋ ð imprȯpṙ Djæpinız ſluıd t bı nuıſ, it’z bikȯz Đı þıŋk a forinṙz aṙ ſ ſtupid ðæt “beıſik etikit” z’n wṙþ ð efṙt t djril intu U̇.
spoiler
They aren’t letting the improper Japanese slide to be nice, it’s because they think all foreigners are so stupid that “basic etiquette” isn’t worth the effort to drill into us.
The butchering mechanic is mostly there as a joke. After you do it once, you unlock a much better and friendlier version of recycling your duplicate Pals.
Oh… I never butchered because that just seemed wrong. Is there any way to just get to the friendlier version without butchering?