Nintendo’s legal battle against Palworld developer Pocketpair has intensified, as the Japanese game-making company alleges in part of its ongoing lawsuit that user-made mods don’t constitute “prior art.”
While Pocketpair previously claimed that mods (such as the Dark Souls 3 Pokemon mod Pocket Souls) invalidate Nintendo’s patents, Games Fray (via IGN) has reported on September 16 that the Pokemon creator has argued in the ongoing lawsuit that, because mods require games to function, anything created by users isn’t “prior art.”
Essentially, Nintendo is claiming that mods are “fair game” as they could be patented by someone else. Thus, the company fears that its gameplay ideas and innovations could similarly be lifted and used by anyone. As IGN noted on September 19, this is particularly worrying for the games industry because patent thieves could theoretically create entire games out of just mods.
The problem here, though, is that Nintendo’s “ideas” and “innovations” aren’t novel. Pokemon has been around for decades, and as Games Fray reported, the ideas the company filed patents for in 2021 weren’t new, either.
Pocketpair, for its part, has purported that Palworld and Pokemon are fundamentally different beasts. Sure, they both start with “p,” and they feature monsters you can capture in balls, but one is an open-world action game and the other is a more traditionally turn-based affair. This, alongside the notion that Palworld isn’t merely a modded Pokemon no matter how much it may look like it, is perhaps why Pocketpair is confused by the lawsuit.
Palworld is out now on PC, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.
Meanwhile, the next Pokemon games are Legends: Z-A and Pokopia. The former is a continuation of the Pokemon Legends series that launches on October 16, while the latter is a life sim not unlike an Animal Crossing title that comes out sometime next year. Both will, of course, be available on Nintendo Switch 1 and 2.