Nintendo accused "Phantom Beast Palu" of infringing three patents, but the compensation was only 500 million yen.
The greater goal may be to establish actual precedents through the courts to prevent the spread of more games similar to the "Pokémon" series and plagiarized games.

February this yearOn the grounds of patent infringementNintendo and The Pokémon Company (Pokémon Co., Ltd.) have filed a lawsuit against Pocket Pair, the developer of Palworld (パルワールド). Pocket Pair had earlier announced thatRelated litigation content.

In the lawsuit filed by Nintendo and the Pokémon Company, it was determined that "Phantom Beast Palu" infringed at least three of its patents, including the operation method of grabbing the target with an object (Patent 7545191,Patent 7493117), and when the character moves to the ground on an air mount, it can automatically switch to a ground mount (Patent 7528390) content presentation processing method.

The most intuitive controversy surrounding "Phantom Palu" is that many of the Palu designs in the game are similar to some elf characters in the "Pokémon" series. However, Pocket Pair CEO Takuro Mizobe emphasized that "Pokémon" is not the source of its design inspiration. Its concept is more based on the dinosaur companion in "Ark: Survival Evolved". At the same time, more design ideas are derived from the "Dragon Quest" series of games. As for the survival mechanism and in-game tasks, they were inspired by "Rust".

Nintendo's patent lawsuit focuses on the method of using objects to grab targets and the method of switching mounts. It does not emphasize that the game character design involves plagiarism. It even only requires Nintendo and The Pokémon Company to pay 500 million yen (about NT$105 million) in compensation. Considering the current profit scale of Pocket Pair from the "Phantom Beast Paloo" content, this is actually not too high.

However, some believe that Nintendo's consideration may be to persuade Pocket Pair to accept a settlement with a smaller amount of compensation, but the greater goal is to establish actual precedent through the court to prevent the spread of more games similar to and copied from the "Pokémon" series.

As for Pocket Pair, it has only published the content of Nintendo's lawsuit, but has not yet announced the progress of the relevant handling.