Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s patent infringement lawsuit in Japan against Pocketpair’s open-world survival game Palworld is ongoing. In the latest development, Nintendo has reworded one of the patents in the case, but what led up to this bizarre move?
Palworld is an open-world survival game that skyrocketed in popularity upon its Steam and Xbox early access launch back on January 19, 2024. It sold 8 million copies in just six days and racked up over 25 million players in one month.
The game world is inhabited by creatures called Pals, which you can capture and use (read: exploit) to carry out various tasks. The visual appearance of the Pals and the method of capturing them by throwing a ball (Pal Sphere), quickly drew comparisons to Pokémon, with the game even getting nicknamed “Pokémon with guns” for its darker, black humor-infused take on the creature collecting genre. With Palworld’s meteoric rise in popularity, it wasn’t long before Nintendo rival Sony got together with Pocketpair to form Palworld Entertainment in June 2024, a new business venture aimed at expanding the IP.
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company showed signs of keeping an eye on Palworld (for example, this official statement from The Pokémon Company back in January 2024). But it wasn’t until September 2024 that they officially announced they were filing a lawsuit in Japan against Pocketpair for infringement of patent rights.
The case involves three patents granted by the Japan Patent Office (JPO): two related to monster capture and release, and one related to riding characters. All three patents were filed in 2024, after Palworld came out. However, they are actually derived from earlier Nintendo patents dating from 2021. In other words, it seems that once Palworld came on the scene, Nintendo filed divisional patents that were geared to fight specifically against Palworld’s alleged infringement of the original patents.
Since then, Pocketpair has made changes to Palworld’s disputed mechanics. The November 2024 patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pokéball-like Pal Spheres (now Pals just materialize next to you when summoned). In May, another Palworld update changed how you can glide in the game — instead of directly grabbing onto Glider Pals, now you just simply use Pal-buffed Glider equipment.
It’s worth noting that these changes by Pocketpair are not an admission of guilt. Rather, as Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara pointed out on Yahoo Japan news last month, Pocketpair is following the standard three-pronged defense against patent lawsuits, which is to “deny infringement, argue that the patents are invalid, and avoid infringement through design changes.” He also noted that Nintendo does not have the upper hand, as there seems to be a fierce back-and-forth with Nintendo pushing for patent infringement and Pocketpair pushing for patent invalidity.
In short, Nintendo’s ride mechanic patent (which got a sudden rewrite recently) covers a system for mounting and maneuvering pre-selected “boardable characters” (tōjō kyarakuta). Commenting on X, Japanese lawyer Ryo Arashida pointed out that it could be argued that the way Palworld’s Glider Pals worked prior to the May update infringed part of the patent’s specifications, namely those about the player grabbing onto and hanging from the boardable character, and their subsequent control of that movement.
Prior to the May Palworld update, you could use an actual Glider Pal to glide (by grabbing onto its feet). However, post-update, players have to use a piece of equipment — a Glider — to glide, rather than actually using the Pals themselves. Instead, Pals now act as passive buffs on your gliding.
Ironically, as Arashida noted, Nintendo’s major argument to get the patent granted in the first place was that a “boardable character” was specifically a character and not a tool, like a parachute. “For this reason, claiming in the lawsuit that a ‘Glider’ (which is a tool) is a ‘boardable character’ would create a contradiction.”
This month, Nintendo reworded the ride-switching mechanic patent. Rewording a patent mid-case is legal as long as it doesn’t introduce any new concepts or technical matter. However, as pointed out by IP consultant Florian Mueller at GamesFray, this only tends to happen if the litigant (in this case, Nintendo) feels the patent is “at a fairly high risk of being deemed invalid in its original form.” Nintendo’s rewriting of the patent makes it more verbose. Mueller focused on the addition of “even when” (-attemo in Japanese) to the wording, noting that “even” is rarely used in patents because it’s “too emphatic and subjective.”
Although it’s not clear exactly what Nintendo’s motivations are behind this sudden rewording, it’s possible that it is using this as a last-ditch tactic to make it harder for the patent claim to be dismissed as invalid.
The case continues. Meanwhile, Pocketpair continues to update Palworld with new features, such as the recently released Terraria crossover.
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.
