Back in September, 2024, news broke out about Nintendo suing Palworld creators, PocketPair, in Japan over many of the mechanics that Palworld uses, sharing similarities with the Pokemon franchise, in what later was confirmed to be a patent infringing lawsuit, according to Nintendo and Game Freak's claims.

While PocketPair did release a response about the whole situation later on, little has been known since then about the lawsuit between the two companies in Japanese grounds. However, this week more information was known about Nintendo's moves in the American continent, as they sought to claim 23 patents in the territory.

GamesFray, a website focused on analyzing and reporting over the litigation aspects of the gaming scene, has been following the case closely, going through Nintendo's legal trail in both continents, analyzing the case and reporting over each new step taken in the legal battle. GamesFray disclosed back in February 8th that Nintendo submitted 23 patent claims to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

However, out of those 23 patents submitted by Nintendo, the USPTO rejected 22 out of those 23 patent claims due to those 22 patents not being considered inventive over prior existing art, leaving only one patent to Nintendo, with the USPTO willing to grant that one patent only if Nintendo drops the other 22 patent claims (since that specific patent was dependant on a rejected one).

All of this is the result of the on-going Palworld lawsuit, of course, and Nintendo's modus operandi in this situation is to try to expand the patent gripe to other territories in hopes of gathering more patents overseas, and then, once Nintendo manages to claim enough patents over their "ideas" and "mechanics" (since it has yet to be confirmed if Palworld has indeed infringed on them or not), then they can apply the same legal action against PocketPair in other countries of operation.

Of course, this being Nintendo, they will try to fight the rejected patents and will continue to pursue and flex their legal front to garner more and more patents filled in their favour, but that remains yet to be seen. Additionally, the legal battle in Japan over the patent lawsuit is still unknown, and with how Japan's laws over copyright and patents, in which the terms Fair Use and Prior Art might as well not exist, it's difficult to know if the outcome might be favourable for PocketPair or not.

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[Xzi]

All this just so GameFreak can release another ultra-buggy stutterfest of a mainline Pokemon game on Switch 2. Doesn't matter how much extra horsepower they have to work with when they're talentless hacks who do all their coding while their heads are up their asses.

 

[CoolMe]

*Nintendo used 23 patent lawsuit..*
*22 of them failed to hit*

Anyway.. stick it, Nintendo! I wonder if the Trump Administration has affected the court ruling in any way, either way im not complaining

 

[Bladexdsl]

they gonna sue the house of magic next

 

[RustInPeace]

Nintendo got beat down like Pat Mahomes did in the Super Bowl

 

[NinStar]

It would be funny to see people from sites like Nintendo Everything and Nintendo Life doing their 4D chess to try to convince that actually Nintendo is in the right here.

 

[Adjule]

suck ya mom, Nintendo

 

[Robert Newbie]

Even as a Nintendo fan I think this is good. Too many patents like this can stall innovation and creativity.

This. I read the news that Nintendo was pursuing this, and I thought, "what's going to happen to the industry, if they get this?"

 

[tpax]

Fuck Nintendo. If you buy Nintendo games, you've clearly lost control over your life. Playing them is okay though.

 

[Bladexdsl]

first they lose to a shop and now this
haw haw haw haw haw

 

[console]

Yes, Nintendo is waste money away. Good for Nintendo to waste money.


Anytime in one day for Nintendo company's public toilet shoot up then give big mess.

 

[tech3475]

Fuck Nintendo. If you buy Nintendo games, you've clearly lost control over your life. Playing them is okay though.

Just buy second hand, Nintendo gets no money and they can't bitch about emulation, homebrew and warez causing them to lose revenue.

 

[OilFreak]

haha

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Nintenbros what do we do now?

 

[raxadian]

Some Digimon games are a too similar to Pokemon Games but Nintendo never sued Bandai did they?

 

[BlusterBong]

how is this news again that is being celebrated as another win for gaming?, it's the same patents we all knew from 2021 but all but one they're rejected in America i guess. Can you show the patent statuses in Japan?, since again, this lawsuit is done mainly in Japan and the earliest approval of said patents were in Japan.

 

[Kwyjor]

how is this news again that is being celebrated as another win for gaming?, it's the same patents we all knew from 2021 but all but one they're rejected in America i guess. Can you show the patent statuses in Japan?, since again, this lawsuit is done mainly in Japan and the earliest approval of said patents were in Japan.

Come now, you can't expect people to stop and read when there's some hating to be done.

 

[The Catboy]

LET’S FUCKING GOOOOOO!
Fuck Big N! Long live Palworld!

 

[ftjiso]

i love this being in the news section too telling everyone how nintendo is failing
screw nintendo

 

[Xzi]

how is this news again that is being celebrated as another win for gaming?, it's the same patents we all knew from 2021 but all but one they're rejected in America i guess. Can you show the patent statuses in Japan?, since again, this lawsuit is done mainly in Japan and the earliest approval of said patents were in Japan.

US developers being given the opportunity to create monster-taming games superior to Pokemon is definitely a big win. Nintendo wouldn't have to grasp at straws this way if it wasn't such a low bar to clear, either, but I still fully expect them to continue putting in zero effort. All they give a shit about is merchandise sales.

 

[BlusterBong]

US developers being given the opportunity to create monster-taming games superior to Pokemon is definitely a big win. Nintendo wouldn't have to grasp at straws this way if it wasn't such a low bar to clear, either, but I still fully expect them to continue putting in zero effort. All they give a shit about is merchandise sales.

but it's all it is, an opportunity and putting Pokemon, regardless of what generation of it you're comparing it to what these "new monster-taming" games could be is a very low bar when there are infinitely better examples to be better than like Yo-Kai Watch, Monster Rancher, and Shin Magami Tensei to copy off of, and it's not like there were several examples of monster-taming games by non-Japaneese studios in the past decade by the indie scen alone with shit you probably forgot about like Monster Crown, Temtem and Coromon.


And it's not like "Putting Zero Effort" was the problem when the Console Pokemon Games in the N64/GC/Wii games by Nintendo's internal teams and later Genius Sonority proved that they could make better pokemon games if they put literally any of their own teams to the task than relying on the incapable GameFreak like they had been for the past several years.