And imagine how much they sacrificed to make it 9.5mm. Not to mention that phone is an outlier (and the iphone 16 is actually 7.8mm). Priorities changed, phones now need more space for things like a bigger battery, better cameras, bigger heatsinks for faster performance and less throttling.
There are technical reasons. You can’t just put in a sliding keyboard on a modern phone and expect it to work the same. They’ll have to cut on so much to fit that without being too thick, and in the end you’ll end up with a phone that’s worse in every way and probably more expensive, for a feature so little people want.
It’s not even copyright, they’re suing for using things they patented, but their patents are extremely general. I kid you not, they have a patent for MOUNTING CREATURES, something hundreds of games have done.
I’m no lawyer so I can’t tell you how well this would hold up in court but it’s ridiculous. See more: https://patents.justia.com/assignee/the-pokemon-company