Nintendo has hit another snag in its ongoing legal battle against Palworld, Pocketpair’s open-world survival game. As reported GamesFrayone of Nintendo’s patents related to the case was rejected by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) for lack of originality.
In September 2024, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company officially announced have filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Japan against Palworld, Pocketpair’s open-world survival game. The case concerns three major patents granted by the JPO: two related to catching and releasing monsters and one related to horse-riding characters.
These patents were all filed and approved in 2024, but trace back to earlier Nintendo patents from 2021. Nintendo appears to have dedicated these spin-off patents to specifically combat Palworld’s alleged infringement of the originals. Since then, the matter has even been ongoing with Nintendo reassignment of an assembly patent midway through a lawsuitand arguing it modifications should not be counted as prior art.
However, one patent in this family of monster capture patents that Nintendo filed in 2024 has not yet been approved. In October, the JPO indicated that this patent did not involve an inventive step, making a non-final decision to reject the application. In justifying its refusal, the office referred to older games with similar mechanics that were released before Nintendo’s 2021 priority date, including ARK (released in 2015), Monster Hunter 4 (2013) and the Japanese browser game Kantai Collection (also 2013). Ironically, Pocketpair’s Craftopia (2020) and Niantic’s Pokémon Go (2016) are among other examples of games that have been used to demonstrate that the patent lacks originality.
While this non-binding and non-final decision by the Japanese Patent Office to reject the application will not have a direct impact on the lawsuit, it may, as noted by GamesFray. This is because rejected patent application 2024-031879 is closely related to the two main monster capture patents (JP7505852 and JP7545191) that are being used against Palworld in this case.
Therefore, the JPO’s decision may call into question the validity of the monster capture patents covered by the lawsuit, strengthening Pocketpair’s position. This may lend a hand the argument that Palworld is not infringing Nintendo’s copyrights, and rather that Palworld’s monster capture mechanics are merely based on decades of similar systems found in older games from various developers. As intellectual property consultant Florian Mueller noted at GamesFray, “The fact that a patent examiner is now looking at real-world games, rather than just patent documents and articles, significantly raises the stakes for Nintendo.”
Earlier this month, former Capcom game developer Yoshiki Okamoto made comments that seemingly involved Pocketpair and Palworld in a legal dispute, sparking a backlash from viewers. In YouTube video In a post on his channel on September 27, Okamoto stated that Palworld “has crossed a line that should not be crossed, and I do not want the world to become a place where such things are acceptable.”
Last month, Pocketpair announced Palworld: Palfarm just a week after Nintendo revealed another cozy Pokémon breeding sim Pokopia. Pocketpair announced on September 16 that Palworld will receive its official version 1.0 sometime in 2026.
In March at GDC IGN sat down for an extended conversation with Pocketpair’s communications director and publishing manager John “Bucky” Buckley following his speech at the “Community Management Summit: Palworld Rollercoaster: Surviving the Collapse” conference. During this conversation, Buckley spoke candidly about Palworld’s many struggles, especially accusations of using generative AI and stealing Pokemon models for their own friends. He he even commented regarding Nintendo’s patent infringement lawsuit against the studio, saying it “was a shock” and “something no one had even considered.”
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who was previously the editor, contributor and translator of the gaming news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and films for various publications.
