Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit is now due for a presentation in October ahead of a court opinion in November. IP expert and games veteran Florian Mueller expects the company to struggle to win anything beyond inconsequential damages that would hardly register as a "rounding error." However, the lawsuit has already forced developer Pocketpair to make changes to Palworld, and studio communications lead John Buckley says it's impacted team morale.
Writing on games fray, Mueller reasons that conflict between the patents Nintendo has filed or applied for and the versions of Palworld in question pose insurmountable challenges for the lawsuit. Much of Nintendo's case is based on patents it applied for after Palworld was released, and last year the company amended its claim to target old versions of the hit survival game, those that existed "before Pocketpair made changes to eliminate patent exposure."
