Nintendo Patent Approved in August Could Be What It Uses Against Palworld

A Japanese IP attorney has narrowed down the potential patent candidates that could be at the center of Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. His analysis also surfaced one particular patent family that he believes is particularly likely to be related to Nintendo’s allegations against Palworld.

The Pokemon Company and Nintendo filed a joint lawsuit against Pocketpair on September 18, claiming that its hit survival crafting game is infringing on multiple patents. The companies did not elaborate on their allegations publicly after bringing their case in front of the Tokyo District Court.

Attorney Narrows Down Potential Palworld Infringements to 28 Patents

Pocketpair subsequently said it was not informed of any patents that Palworld is allegedly infringing. But the list of likely candidates isn’t particularly long, according to Japan-based patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara. In a recent interview with Yahoo News (as translated by Automation), Kurihara opined that, given how the lawsuit was jointly filed by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company, the patents at the center of the case are plausibly owned by both parties. Based on this reasoning, the attorney narrowed down the list of possibilities to 28 patents.

Nintendo Has a ‘Killer Patent’ For Capturing Pokemon, Attorney Says

Looking at this remaining group, Kurihara highlighted Japanese patent number 7545191, which appears to be primarily centered on creature-catching mechanics. This patent was first submitted in late July 2024 and granted the following month, after Nintendo and The Pokemon Company asked for an accelerated review process. It’s part of a slightly more comprehensive patent family that describes the process of aiming a capture item at a character and releasing it using two inputs, an analog stick and a button press. This triggers a check that determines whether the character’s status should be changed to “owned by the player.” The illustrations attached to the patent depict something resembling the Poke Ball Plus controller being used for the two required inputs.

Kurihara described this as a “killer patent” that covers a wide variety of use cases. “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,” he explained. In a statement provided to Game Rant, veteran patent analyst Florian Mueller said that patent number 7545191 being central to Nintendo’s lawsuit against Pocketpair is “a plausible theory.”

The request for an expedited review of patent number 7545191 also facilitated the approval of three other patents from Nintendo and The Pokemon Company (7528390, 7493117 and 7505854). Kurihara noted that amending an existing patent for specific litigation purposes is an established industry practice, and possibly what happened in this particular case. Two of those three divisional patents elaborate on some additional specifics of creature capture, while the remaining one describes a system for riding creatures, which is something that’s also possible to do in Palworld.