Japanese Patent Attorney Discusses What Patents Nintendo Could Be Suing Palworld Over

Last week, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Palworld creator Pocketpair, alleging that their game had violated several of Nintendo’s patents.

At the time of this writing, Nintendo has not officially specified what patents they are suing Palworld over, and Pocketpair claimed to be equally in the dark. This has led to a great deal of speculation from fans about the matter, especially since most expected Nintendo to sue over the creature designs, many of which are uncomfortably close to certain Pokemon.

Speaking to Yahoo Japan (translations via Automaton Media), Japanese patent attorney and intellectual property rights consultant Kiyoshi Kurihara offered his own analysis of the situation. Kurihara believes that Nintendo faced difficulties proving copyright infringement when it came to Palworld’s creature designs, and hence opted to go after Pocketpair for patent infringement instead.

“As you may know, there have been opinions about Palworld’s monsters being similar to Pokémon in terms of form. They come close, but they’re narrowly avoiding it [Copyright Infringement].”

As for the specific patents Nintendo chose to go after, Kurihara thinks it is likely related to Palworld‘s capture mechanics, which is the main point of similarity when it comes to gameplay from both Palworld and Pokemon.

“Aside from the monster designs, [Palworld’s] game system does not seem to be very similar to Pokémon, and it seems to be an open-world game similar to Ark. If there is a common point, it is the mechanic whereby you throw a ball-like object at monsters to capture them. If there is any patent infringement to speak of, I think it would be this.”

Kurihara goes on to discuss four divisional patent applications that are jointly held by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company. These types of patents are used to isolate specific parts of larger “parent” patents, and were filed for accelerated approval back in 2021. Kuirhara believes that Nintendo did this as part of a common legal tactic to amend existing patents so they can be used to sue specific copyright infringing properties.

In line with his earlier comments, Kurihara chose to single out Patent No. 7545191, which describes game mechanics to capture Pokemon. It covers specifics such as aiming a capture item (Pokeball) at a target (Pokemon), releasing the capture item based on player input, calculating capture success, and other aspects. Kurihara calls it a “killer patent” targeting Pokemon-like games.

“It seems like it would be hard to avoid if you want to make a Pokémon-like game, and it’s easy to infringe if you’re not careful.”

The other patents mentioned include one that appears to describe the Ride Pokemon feature, as well as others covering other aspects of capturing Pokemon.

All in all, it seems that Nintendo has taken every step that it can to ensure that they will win their suit against Palworld, but it is likely we will not see the outcome for quite some time. Stay tuned for more updates as they come.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.