this post was submitted on 25 Jan 2024
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We keep thinking about such IP lawsuits as "all or nothing" affairs because YouTube with their strike system and similar systems by other companies make it seem that way. Yet that's not the case.
In this instance, Game Freak and Nintendo probably cannot go after palworld as a whole but battle around and then have them change singular Pal designs. That's a super expensive thing to do and takes ages. So they'll only do that if they risk loosing the claim to some brand ownership or other.
Which would be fine, frankly. With all the money Palworld got, they can aford to redesign some creatures. The number of them that actually look like imitations in practice is much smaller than critics make it to be.
I think people compare a lot because it's extremely easy to think of the "originals", even when it's more of an inspiration than a copy-paste, like Wixen-Braixen, Lamball-Wooloo or Lovander-Salamence.
Yeah, I agree. But being evocative of an idea is not illegal, unless the design is near indistinguishable or if they used files from Pokémon in the production of the Pals. Say, how many Superman copies are there? There are multiple stories out there whose main idea is "What if Superman was bad."
Meanwhile I see people going "Anubis is just Lucario" and I wonder why they think the Pokémon Company owns the idea of every single upright canid. It doesn't even have spikes or anything.
IDK how US law is in this case but in Germany, all of this would evolve around the question if the game could be mistaken for a pokemon game die to those designs. It doesn't matter how similar stuff looks as long as it's not really plagiarism and obviously copied. So as long as they do not make it look like a pokemon game or use the pokeball or similar aesthetics, they wouldn't risk being sued or could harm Game Freak in return. They could challenge the registered trademarks etc. which could horrendously backfire, so large corporations usually avoid going after other large corporations and try to hash stuff like this out in backrooms. Lego for example is infamous for going after small shops that import Chinese brick makers but very decidedly not going after Hasbro, Lidl and Amazon, because those companies have the means to fight Lego's claims one by one which could lead to design rights being deleted by courts.
In this case it would probably be fought in Japan because both The Pokémon Company and Palworld's developer Pocketpair are from Japan.
And Japanese copyright law is one of the strictest in the world
Of course, but this is what makes me wonder, if there was anything truly objectionable happening, wouldn't they have been taken down already? It's not like this was a surprise release.
Which would be the good ending tbh. No more plagiarism problem and we have a good game on its own
Absolutely. It's not like they are incapable of decent original design. Daedream is cute and Depresso is funny as hell.
Daedream and Depresso are a tad generic to me tbh. It blends in with the countless similar designs of "blobby goblin fairy" we have seen not only from Pokémon but in fact many other franchises. Reminds me of Sleepmon from digimon. I think you might like Sleepmon
I can see the appeal but usually such designs are salvaged by having them change into more unique forms later.