Nintendo and The Pokémon Company recently filed a lawsuit against Pocketpair, the Japanese indie studio creator of Palworld, due to patent rights infringement, blocking the PS5 launch of the game in Japan.
Contrary to popular belief, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company aren’t suing Pocketpair due to copyright infringement, despite the creatures named “Pals” look really similar to Pokémon creatures, but are just different enough to avoid plagiarism, at least legally speaking.
Nintendo and Pokémon Company’s legal teams took time to prepare a case much more difficult for Pocketpair to counter: infringement of patents related to game mechanincs, particularly referred to the actions of throwing “balls” to capture monsters, throwing said balls to initiate battles or riding creatures.
These patents were originally jointly filled by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in 2021 for the open-world game Pokémon Legends: Arceus, which featured an “open world action Pokémon” experience before Palworld did in 2024.
But, according to a Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara questioned in Yahoo Japan (via Automaton), this strategy that might work in Japan could not be enough in the US, where “abstract ideas” based on software like those game mechanincs are usually rejected.
“It can be said that (the examination of software-related inventions) is generally stricter in the US than in Japan”, the attorney said. However, Kurihara found that some of these patent’s divisional applications in the US are being filed for a prioritized review process, which could mean Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are trying to sue Pocketpair in the US, too.