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.

Source #1
Source #2

 

[Xzi]

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.

That only further proves my point, they could fire all of GameFreak at any given time and hire on a bunch of developers who are twice as talented for half the cost. Yet they won't even bother doing that because they don't care about about the quality of Pokemon games in the least. They're more invested in handicapping the competition than they are in actually competing.

 

[BlusterBong]

They're more invested in handicapping the competition than they are in actually competing.

If they truly did care so much about handicapping the competition, then why did they publish the first Yo-Kai Watch game overseas? why didn't they go after Temtem when it first blew up? Why did they go after Palworld only after they partnered up with Sony in the same way they did with Gamefreak when beforehand they were more than willing to leave it alone?, especialy since before then, they had offical statements both from TPC and some of thier lawyers that they didn't care much about it with the lawsuit after PocketPair partnered with Sony involving Sony's lawyers.

That only further proves my point, they could fire all of GameFreak at any given time and hire on a bunch of developers who are twice as talented for half the cost. Yet they won't even bother doing that because they don't care about about the quality of Pokemon games in the least.

Why would they fire Gamefreak's workforce when doing so is a fucking stupid descision since you would be firing a partner/subsitarry's worth of jobs and getting "Nintendo lays off entire staff" articles that will actually be worse for PR than taking down little timmy's fangame for no good reason besides "The games they're making sucks" and many of thier other internal teams or partners/subsitarries have now already been structured to focus on one or a small handful IPs as it is now, and that's not adding onto the undeniable fact that every successive generation of hardware regardless of console or PC has only made it harder for every developer to make games.

 

[LeyendaV]

Wait... PalWorld still exists?

 

[notsu]

The lawsuit is in Japan, right? Does this matter much in that regard?

 

[Snintendog]

The lawsuit is in Japan, right? Does this matter much in that regard?

Remember All patent offices are connected world wide. If one country swats it down they lose it world wide as per the trade agreements. nintendo buzzing the patent office with Infringing patents is like poking the IRS and publicly posting Tax Fraud. Especially with the USAID situation cracking down do they really want to get the swarm that is currently attack all sort of government corruption to look at the patent office and likely Clean up there now? Remember Patents are not often checked before being filed only being challenged if noticed.

TLDR: If nintendo starts to make a big stink in the US patent office They will likely trigger the DOGE to Swarm there next. Bye bye Stupid and illegal patents that got by.

 

[timefighter]

View attachment 485688​

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.

Source #1
Source #2

The USPTO really went "NintenDENIED"

 

[Xzi]

If they truly did care so much about handicapping the competition, then why did they publish the first Yo-Kai Watch game overseas? why didn't they go after Temtem when it first blew up? Why did they go after Palworld only after they partnered up with Sony in the same way they did with Gamefreak when beforehand they were more than willing to leave it alone?

Because they're petty, and what truly spurs them to action is seeing another monster taming game succeed to the tune of tens of millions of sales. Yo-Kai and TemTem didn't get even a fraction of that, so Nintendo didn't view them as a threat. Not to mention that publishing Pokemon-likes gives them even more direct control over the genre, so of course they'd be open to that.

Why would they fire Gamefreak's workforce when doing so is a fucking stupid descision since you would be firing a partner/subsitarry's worth of jobs and getting "Nintendo lays off entire staff" articles that will actually be worse for PR than taking down little timmy's fangame for no good reason besides "The games they're making sucks" and many of thier other internal teams or partners/subsitarries have now already been structured to focus on one or a small handful IPs as it is now, and that's not adding onto the undeniable fact that every successive generation of hardware regardless of console or PC has only made it harder for every developer to make games.

As if Nintendo has ever cared about bad PR. Even assuming they do, they could easily control the narrative by hiring all of the new staff before getting rid of the old. And again, it would not be difficult to find developers better at optimization and more familiar with newer engines and hardware than GameFreak are. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of AAA devs laid off over the last couple years, and nearly every one of them would be a huge improvement over what they've got currently.

 

[BlusterBong]

Remember All patent offices are connected world wide. If one country swats it down they lose it world wide as per the trade agreements. nintendo buzzing the patent office with Infringing patents is like poking the IRS and publicly posting Tax Fraud. Especially with the USAID situation cracking down do they really want to get the swarm that is currently attack all sort of government corruption to look at the patent office and likely Clean up there now? Remember Patents are not often checked before being filed only being challenged if noticed.

TLDR: If nintendo starts to make a big stink in the US patent office They will likely trigger the DOGE to Swarm there next. Bye bye Stupid and illegal patents that got by.

That's not even how it works, if your patent gets rejected in the US, you can still get it approved in other states, such as Japan, the USTPO official website even admits that the rights gained from a US Patent have no effect in foreign countries.and besides, it's not like submitting patents to be approved or rejected even counts as tax fraud, else literally every person who ever filed a patent would be commiting tax fraud, and this Lawsuit is entirely in Japan, so guess which state's patent laws are going to be used over and above the US'ses.

Because they're petty, and what truly spurs them to action is seeing another monster taming game succeed to the tune of tens of millions of sales. Yo-Kai and TemTem didn't get even a fraction of that, so Nintendo didn't view them as a threat.

TemTem sold half a million in it's first month, and Yo-Kai Watch became a phenomenon in Japan for a brief while when the first two games came out and the second game sold 5.8 Million copies across all 3 of it's version alone. Do I even need to remind you the time between PocketPair and Sony making Palworld Entertainment and the inital news of the lawsuit?

they could easily control the narrative by hiring all of the new staff before getting rid of the old. And again, it would not be difficult to find developers better at optimization and more familiar with newer engines and hardware than GameFreak are

Getting rid of old staff is still laying off staff, what do you think the word layoff even means in a business context?

And again, it would not be difficult to find developers better at optimization and more familiar with newer engines and hardware than GameFreak are. There have been hundreds, if not thousands of AAA devs laid off over the last couple years, and nearly every one of them would be a huge improvement over what they've got currently.

Sure they would, it's not like the constant tales of poor optimization in modern AAA games would've told you otherwise and likely would have made things worse than they already are at a performance level, why do you think there are devs who are clammoring for DLSS and shit like Nanite so they can optimize even less than they already are?

 

[Kwyjor]

Remember All patent offices are connected world wide. If one country swats it down they lose it world wide as per the trade agreements.

That is brazenly false and I cannot imagine where you are getting your information.

Remember Patents are not often checked before being filed only being challenged if noticed.

This whole bloody story is about a patent application being checked by the patent office before being granted!

Holy f!ck, one story gets posted and suddenly everyone is an expert on patent law.

 

[Jayro]

I'm beginning to love the recent smell of Nintendo taking so many L's as of late.

 

[Xzi]

Do I even need to remind you the time between PocketPair and Sony making Palworld Entertainment and the inital news of the lawsuit?

Nintendo made a statement saying they were looking to find ways to sue right after the game's successful launch, well before the Sony partnership was announced.

Getting rid of old staff is still laying off staff, what do you think the word layoff even means in a business context?

I know. So we get a headline saying, "Nintendo hires hundreds of new employees," and then a couple days later, "Nintendo lays off hundreds of employees." Net zero, their fanbase couldn't care less. Then a couple years later we get much higher quality games, and it all makes sense.

poor optimization in modern AAA games

Somewhat understandable when we're talking about cutting-edge engines and the highest possible graphical fidelity, but not when we're talking about games that look on par with or worse than Gamecube releases like Scarlet and Violet do. Nobody expects Pokemon games to be on the bleeding edge of technology, but that means they rightfully receive much harsher criticism when they're both full of bugs AND have major performance issues.

 

[whitesword7]

should’ve been zero patent for this scumbag company… but godamnit this scumbag company makes good products

 

[BlusterBong]

Nintendo made a statement saying they were looking to find ways to sue right after the game's successful launch, well before the Sony partnership was announced.

They said that they were going to investigate and take appropriate actions, it's fully possible that they would have left it alone if Sony didn't do the partnership because that statement and the announcement of Sony's partnership is all we have to go off of.

I know. So we get a headline saying, "Nintendo hires hundreds of new employees," and then a couple days later, "Nintendo lays off hundreds of employees." Net zero, their fanbase couldn't care less. Then a couple years later we get much higher quality games, and it all makes sense.

You know who would care?, the people who would want to work at Nintendo, or even any other company that had several highly publicized layoffs. What would two back to back news articles that would effectively say that the company is fully willing to hire new staff just to replace you and the team you would be working with say about your job prospects, let alone completely willing to fire you for any reason that isn't doing poorly at your job?, not very well I'd imagine.

Somewhat understandable when we're talking about cutting-edge engines and the highest possible graphical fidelity, but not when we're talking about games that look on par with or worse than Gamecube releases like Scarlet and Violet do. Nobody expects Pokemon games to be on the bleeding edge of technology, but that means they rightfully receive much harsher criticism when they're both full of bugs AND have major performance issues.

The Silent Hill 2 Remake has become a posterchild of bad optimization specifically because people found out that the game literally renders everything as if you had full draw distance on if you modded the fog out (Not even LOD models) even when said fog that was meant to hide the optimization tricks that was used in the originals was kept in the remake to the point that DLSS was deemed mandatory for the reccomended specs.

I shouldn't even have to talk about how many Switch Ports, let alone PC PORTS were infamous for how little the portjobs were to actually optimize the games for the hardware or even an acceptable standard, and that's not mentioning the fact that most PC gamers if Steam's serveys are anything to go by don't even have the latest GPUs or over 8GB VRAM and yet most of the AAA Industry is focused entirely on Cutting-Edge graphicall fidelity (that is mostly done by having the game be made in Unreal and throwing as many "optimization" options like DLSS to fix it)

 

[Xzi]

They said that they were going to investigate and take appropriate actions

We all knew what that meant coming from Nintendo, be real. They release like two games a year and take major legal action against somebody like ten times a year.

What would two back to back news articles that would effectively say that the company is fully willing to hire new staff just to replace you and the team you would be working with say about your job prospects, let alone completely willing to fire you for any reason that isn't doing poorly at your job?

What are you talking about? We've already established that GameFreak are fucking awful at their jobs. Nintendo has given them far too many second chances, and all that demonstrates is that they value and reward incompetence. Not a good look.

I shouldn't even have to talk about how many Switch Ports, let alone PC PORTS were infamous for how little the portjobs were to actually optimize the games for the hardware or even an acceptable standard

If all you do is focus on the negatives, sure. On the flip side, how many third-party Switch ports both look and perform much better than the mainline Pokemon games? A LOT. Obviously I'm not suggesting they hire every rando who lies on his resume, they should vet candidates individually and thoroughly. Again though, when we're talking about an F-tier developer like GameFreak, there's pretty much nowhere to go but up.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

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.

It's kinda just the same people choosing not to read and instead hate on Nintendo because...they clearly hate Nintendo, but refuse to sever that cord that connects them to Nintendo entirely.


And this is the point where I give a friendly reminder that until the U.S. patent office puts a "Final Rejection" on any patent, those "rejected" patents can still be approved if reworked in a way that they become acceptable and can be approved. Plus, one patent still got through, so have fun guessing which one that is.

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.

1) Add Monster Hunter Stories 1 and 2 to that list. I feel those are also way better examples than the "new monster-taming" games (read: garbage "fan games" - in this case, IP/trademark-stealing asset flips - that people churn out by the shovelload every day). Also, Yo-Kai Watch definitely didn't get enough love here in the West, which is why it's been Japan-exclusive starting with the 4th game (it did way better in Japan compared to the West, because nobody in the West gives a crap about anything except Pokemon. Just Pokemon. JUST POKEMON).

2) You just casually mentioned the Gamecube Pokemon games there. Those were the two Pokemon games I first played and grew up on. You deserve a thumbs-up for that alone.

Post automatically merged: Feb 14, 2025

Why would they fire Gamefreak's workforce when doing so is a fucking stupid descision since you would be firing a partner/subsitarry's worth of jobs and getting "Nintendo lays off entire staff" articles that will actually be worse for PR than taking down little timmy's fangame for no good reason besides "The games they're making sucks" and many of thier other internal teams or partners/subsitarries have now already been structured to focus on one or a small handful IPs as it is now, and that's not adding onto the undeniable fact that every successive generation of hardware regardless of console or PC has only made it harder for every developer to make games.

Not to mention that there are laws in Japan that forbid this kind of carpet bombing-style layoff spree - or, at least, make it so that doing so comes with hefty penalties. People seem to forget sometimes that the mass layoffs we've been seeing these past few years have been almost exclusively a Western/NA trend (where companies aren't punished much, if at all, for abusing their employees), whereas Japanese companies (including Nintendo) have been a lot more consistent when it comes to retaining workers and keeping turnover rates low.

 

[Xzi]

nobody in the West gives a crap about anything except Pokemon. Just Pokemon. JUST POKEMON

Yeah, just Pokemon merch and cards. Nobody in the West gives a crap about Pokemon games any more, because by now they know better than to set any expectations for them. They get zero hype and stop being talked about two weeks after release. Meanwhile, Palworld still gets major updates regularly. Being a Nintendo fan doesn't mean you have to permanently turn your brain off, competition is good for the industry.

 

[notsu]

Bye bye Stupid and illegal patents that got by.

I hope they do something about the Nemesis system. One of the best patents stuck in jail.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

I hope they do something about the Nemesis system. One of the best patents stuck in jail.

They won't. Because the Nemesis system patent is a patent that was filed by and approved for a U.S./Western company. And everyone knows that when it comes to stuff like this, Western and Western-facing companies get a free pass from people who hate Nintendo.

So we won't see the Nemesis patent be removed until long after the point when the system is rendered 100% obsolete and everyone stops actually caring about it (much like loading screen minigames).

 

[Xzi]

And everyone knows that when it comes to stuff like this, Western and Western-facing companies get a free pass from people who hate Nintendo.

Lol no, I don't think you'll find a single person simping for WB Games any more. They've released nothing but live-service slop in recent years. Patenting game mechanics is a terrible anti-competitive idea in general, no matter who's trying to do it.

 

[ChronosNotashi]

Lol no, I don't think you'll find a single person simping for WB Games any more. They've released nothing but live-service slop in recent years. Patenting game mechanics is a terrible anti-competitive idea in general, no matter who's trying to do it.

I mean, even with what you just said, I only ever see people talking about the failed live-service games when talking about Warner Bros as far as issues with the company. People rarely, if ever, bring up the Nemesis System patent anymore, save for when different (non-Warner Bros.-affiliated) companies are going through patent-related events.

Which, to me, indicates that we've already reached the point where nobody actually gives a crap about the patent anymore, and mentions it almost exclusively as a convenient arguing point against random patent #562574263. Hence why I say that it often gets a free pass in these kinds of things - nobody cares about it except when using it for the same rehearsed argument.


Edit: Same thing happened with Bandai Namco's loading screen minigame patent, iirc. Those that knew about the patent when it was filed were likely up in arms about it at first. But once computer technology advanced enough that games didn't take nearly as long to load, people stopped caring about the patent, and it more or less expired without much fanfare. Because since loading screen times became way shorter, there was less of a need for something in-game to distract the player while waiting for a game to load. Now people only bring it up for the same reason people bring up the Nemesis System patent.