Does Palworld break Pokémon's copyright? We asked a lawyer
Pocketpair's monster-collecting survival game Palworld has rekindled the eternal debate over what exactly constitutes a breach of copyright. While the game's mechanics are more reminiscent of Ark: Survival Evolved and other tree-punching, template-arranging wilderness sims, its monsters owe obvious debts to Nintendo and Game Freaks' Pokémon games.
The developers have something of a track record on this front, with their older early access release Craftopia freely stirring in nods to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. But what separates copyright infringement from a flagrant, but perfectly legal rip-off? Given that a lot of people are making the case for Palworld being copyright theft online, I thought it might be useful to seek insight from (ominous roll of thunder) an actual lawyer.
Tim Cotton is senior legal counsel at RELX subsidiary Reed Exhibitions, owner of Gamer Network and thus of Rock Paper Shotgun. He's a specialist in media law with over 22 years of experience. I got in touch with him this morning to ask whether there is any merit to the claims that Palworld infringes on Pokémon's copyright.
Cotton began by offering a few quick definitions. Firstly, there's the concept of copyright itself, which under UK and EU law, is automatically applied to an original artwork when it's created, forbidding others from copying or reproducing that artwork in any way, though there are a few minor exceptions to this principle - for example, you might teach a course on how Pokémon are designed, using otherwise-copyrighted illustrations. Creators can also take out trademarks on characters so as to stop others from copying them, though under the principle of "passing off", you can also bring a case against somebody for making use of your design, even if you haven't trademarked it.
Do any of these prohibitions apply to Palworld? Cotton doesn't think so, commenting that Pokémon and Pals are "sufficiently different that there's no problem". The key point is that however
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