Amid Nintendo’s ongoing patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld, the company’s initial efforts to patent a variety of Pokémon-style monster capture and throwing mechanics in Japan have been rejected.
Nintendo launched its controversial lawsuit against Palworld maker Pocketpair last year following the game’s wildly successful launch, accusing the studio of infringing “multiple” patents. At the time, it said it was seeking an injunction and compensation for damages. In response, Pocketpair vowed to fight the legal action, saying it wanted to ensure small studios could not be “hindered or discouraged from pursuing creative ideas”.
Throughout all this, it remained unclear exactly what patents Nintendo was accusing Palworld of infringing, although evidence unearthed by legal observers suggested the lawsuit primarily hinged on Pokémon’s ball-throwing and creature catching mechanics. Notably, one of the patents Nintendo appeared to be pinning its legal hopes on wasn’t filed until after PalWorld’s release – albeit appended to a pre-existing “parent” patent filed in December 2021. As one IP expert observed at the time, it was “exceedingly plausible” Nintendo had crafted the patent application to specifically target Palworld.
Speculation Pokémon’s Pokéball mechanics lay at the heart of Nintendo’s lawsuit appeared to be confirmed last December when Pocketpair released an update to remove Palworld’s Pokéball-style summoning mechanic. It later removed a gliding mechanic, saying it had to make “yet another compromise” due to the lawsuit. Since then, Palworld lawyers have argued, among other things, that the continued existence of games like Titanfall 2 and Ark: Survival Evolved – which all feature similar mechanics to those Nintendo wishes to patent – invalidates the company’s efforts, and Pocketpair has continued to assert the “invalidity of the patents in question”. And it now appears Japan’s patent office agrees – in part and for now at least – with that stance.
As reported by GamesFray, the Japan Patent Office has now rejected an application (specifically application no. 2024-031879) filed by Nintendo in March last year which attempts to patent certain capture and item-throwing mechanics. According to the machine translated rejection notice, the patent will not be granted in its current form as the “claimed invention(s) could have easily been made by persons who have common knowledge in the technical field to which the claimed invention(s) pertains”, given evidence the “invention(s)” already existed “in Japan or other foreign countries prior to the filing of the patent application”.
The rejection notice then highlights documentation provided by an unnamed third-party pointing to instances of similar mechanics existing prior to the filing in games such as Monster Hunter 4, Ark: Survival Evolved, Pocketpair’s own Craftopia, and even Pokémon Go. However, as GamesFray notes, the rejection isn’t final, and Nintendo may still choose to amend its application in order to sway the patent examiner. It also stresses a final rejection of the application would have no “direct impact” on the Palworld lawsuit given patent office decisions are non-binding. That doesn’t necessarily leave Nintendo in the clear, however; GamesFray says Japanese judges “tend to have respect for the determinations made by patent examiners”.
Of course, Nintendo finds itself in an entirely different position in the US, where it was recently granted a patent covering gameplay mechanics relating to the summoning of a sub-character to let it fight another. Eurogamer spoke to legal experts at the time to find out how enforceable that patent actually is.
