Nintendo has run into another issue during its ongoing legal battle against Pocketpair’s open-world survival game Palworld. As reported by GamesFray, one of the Nintendo patents related to the case has been rejected by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) for lacking originality.
Back in September 2024, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company officially announced they were filing a patent infringement lawsuit in Japan against Pocketpair’s open-world survival game Palworld. The case involves three main patents granted by the JPO: two related to monster capture and release, and one related to riding characters.
These patents were all filed and approved in 2024, but are derived from earlier Nintendo patents dating from 2021. It seems that Nintendo geared these divisional patents to fight specifically against Palworld’s alleged infringement of the originals. Since then, the case has rumbled on with Nintendo even rewriting a mount-related patent mid-lawsuit, and arguing that mods should not count as prior art.
However, one patent in this family of monster capture patents that Nintendo filed in 2024 has yet to be approved. In October, the JPO pointed out that this patent lacks an inventive step, making a non-final decision to reject the application. The office’s reasoning for the rejection made reference to older games with similar mechanics that were released even before Nintendo’s 2021 priority date, including ARK (released in 2015), Monster Hunter 4 (2013), and Japanese browser game Kantai Collection (also 2013). Ironically, Pocketpair’s Craftopia (2020) and Niantic’s Pokémon Go (2016) were among other examples of games that were used to argue that the patent lacks originality.
Although this non-binding and non-final decision by the Japan Patent Office to reject the application will not directly impact the lawsuit, it may still influence it, as noted by GamesFray. This is because the 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 could cast doubt on the validity of the monster capture patents involved in the lawsuit, strengthening Pocketpair’s position. It could aid the argument that Palworld is not infringing on Nintendo’s copyright, rather Palworld’s monster-capture mechanics are merely building upon decades of similar systems found in older games made by various developers. As IP consultant Florian Mueller at GamesFray noted, “The fact that the patent examiner is now looking at real-world games as opposed to just patent documents and articles considerably ups the ante for Nintendo.”
Earlier this month, former Capcom game developer Yoshiki Okamoto issued comments seemingly against Pocketpair and Palworld in the legal battle, sparking a backlash from viewers. In a YouTube video posted on his channel on September 27, Okamoto said Palworld had “crossed a line that should not be crossed, and I don’t want the world to become a place where this kind of thing is acceptable.”
Last month, Pocketpair announced Palworld: Palfarm just a week after Nintendo revealed fellow cozy farming sim Pokémon Pokopia. Pocketpair announced on September 16 that Palworld would get an official 1.0 release sometime in 2026.
At GDC in March, IGN sat down for an extended conversation with Pocketpair communications director and publishing manager John “Bucky” Buckley following his talk at the conference, ‘Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.’ During that talk, Buckley went into candid detail about a number of Palworld’s struggles, especially the accusations of it using generative AI and stealing Pokemon’s models for its own Pals. He even commented on Nintendo’s patent infringement lawsuit against the studio, saying it “came as a shock” and was “something that no one even considered.”
Verity Townsend is a Japan-based freelance writer who previously served as editor, contributor and translator for the game news site Automaton West. She has also written about Japanese culture and movies for various publications.
