A Game Featuring a Host of Illegal Activities Could become a Potential Savior in the Nintendo vs Palworld Legal Battle

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A Game Featuring a Host of ******** Activities Could become a Potential Savior in the Nintendo vs Palworld Legal Battle

Pocketpair, the developer of Palworld, is being sued by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company for “infringement of patent rights.” Many people compared Palworld to Pokemon heavily before it was released.

Palworld was released on January 19, 2024. | Credit: Pocketpair.

For those who haven’t played this immensely popular game, Palworld‘s basic idea is that it incorporates elements of the Pokemon franchise, such as the use of ****** to capture monsters of different elemental types for use in exploration and combat, with survival game mechanics. However, as things stand, Pocketpair may have an unexpected ally in an 8-year-old mod of a popular title as it fights Nintendo’s lawsuit.

An 8-year-old GTA 5 Mod Might be Palworld‘s Best Defense Against Nintendo

You can catch Pokemons in GTA 5. | Credit: Rockstar Games.

As Palworld fights Nintendo’s lawsuit, it might find an unlikely ally in an 8-year-old GTA 5 mod. According to an expert from Japan-based Patent Attorney Corporation Siarasia, the mod might provide a strong defense against one of the three patents Nintendo has dragged Palworld developer Pocketpair up on, according to the Nikkei Business Online Edition (as translated by

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).

Earlier this month, Pocketpair made public the amount of money Nintendo was requesting as well as the patents it claims were specifically violated. Some legal experts predicted that these patents would be the ones that were violated.

According to reports, after Palworld‘s Early Access release, Nintendo and the Pokemon Company strengthened their legal claim by filing three new divisional patents, which are smaller versions of larger and pre-existing patents.

GTA 5 is relevant to one of those patents, which deals with throwing a ball to capture animals. A fan-made GTA 5 mod that brings Pokemon to Los Santos is mentioned by the representative patent attorney.

Throwing a Poke Ball-like object at a character in an attempt to capture them is a tried-and-true mechanic in this 2016 mod. Although Automaton says it’s probably this Pokemon GO-inspired mod, the mod itself has no name.

What makes that relevant, then? The disputed GTA 5 mod not only predates the parent patent filed in December 2021 but also has a Pokemon-like capturing sequence that is comparable to the one detailed in one of the divisional patents mentioned earlier.

Therefore, there is a possibility that the GTA 5 Pokémon mod will be recognized as a precedent by the court. Nintendo will lose one of the patents it is relying on in the lawsuit if that occurs.

Palworld vs Nintendo – What’s All the Fuss About?

Palworld has uncanny similarities with Pokemon. | Credit: Pocketpair.

When Palworld first gained popularity, some people were worried that some of the game’s features might be too similar to those established by Nintendo’s franchise and that the Pals in the game looked too much like real Pokemon.

Approximately eight months after Pocketpair’s survival game was made available in early access, some people voiced their belief that Nintendo might sue the Palworld developer for the IP similarities, and that is exactly what happened.

Nintendo and The Pokemon Company sued Pocketpair for patent infringement in the Tokyo District Court on September 18. The complaint “seeks an injunction against infringement and compensation for damages on the grounds that Palworld […] infringes multiple patent rights.”

Nintendo claims that it will “continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights” in order to defend the Nintendo name and the numerous franchises that “it has worked hard to establish over the years.” This is the reason behind the lawsuit.

Meanwhile, this particular lawsuit and its possible impact on the game are currently restricted to Japan because patent rights are only enforceable in the nation in which they were granted.

Analysts, however, think it’s reasonable to assume that Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are getting ready to raise a similar issue in the US as well, given the patents that are presently awaiting approval abroad.

Given that the game has a far larger player base in the US than in Japan, this might have a greater effect on Pocketpair. However, because the US system is so much stricter when it comes to approving software-related inventions, Nintendo may find it more difficult to make a case there.

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