Nintendo and The Pokémon Company's Monster Capturing Patent Rejected, Could Foreshadow Problems with Their Palworld Lawsuit
Blog Andrew Joseph 31 Oct , 2025 0
Nintendo has another problem in its legal battle with Pocketpair's open-world survival game Palworld. It is reported Game FreyOne of Nintendo's patents involved in the case was rejected by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) due to lack of originality.
Back in September 2024, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company Officially announced They filed a patent infringement lawsuit in Japan against Pocketpair's open-world survival game Palworld. The case involves three major patents granted by the Japan Intellectual Property Office: two related to monster capture and release, and one related to a ride-on character.
These patents were all filed and approved in 2024, but originate from earlier Nintendo patents in 2021. Nintendo appears to have tailored these divisional patents specifically in response to Palworld's alleged infringement of the originals. The case has been tied to Nintendo ever since Rewriting installation-related patents pendingand think Modules should not be counted as prior art.
However, one of the series of monster-capturing patents filed by Nintendo in 2024 has yet to be approved. In October, the Japan Patent Office pointed out that the patent lacked inventive step and made a non-final decision to reject the application. The office's rationale for the rejection referenced older games with similar mechanics released even before Nintendo's 2021 priority date, including Ark (released in 2015), Monster Hunter 4 (2013) and the Japanese web game Kantai Collection (also 2013). Ironically, Pocketpair's Craftopia (2020) and Niantic's Pokémon Go (2016) are examples of games used to argue that the patent lacks originality.
GamesFray noted that while this non-binding and non-final decision by the Japanese Patent Office to reject the application will not directly affect the litigation, it may still have an impact on it. This is because rejected patent application 2024-031879 is closely related to the two main monster capture patents used in this case against Palworld (JP7505852 and JP7545191).
Therefore, the JPO's decision may cast doubt on the validity of the monster capture patents involved in the lawsuit, strengthening Pocketpair's position. This might help prove that Palworld isn't infringing on Nintendo's copyrights, but rather that Palworld's monster catching mechanics are simply built on decades of similar systems from older games made by different developers. As Florian Mueller, intellectual property counsel at GamesFray, points out, “The fact that patent examiners are now looking at real-world games, rather than just patent documents and articles, significantly raises the stakes for Nintendo.”
At the beginning of this month, Former Capcom game developer Yoshiki Okamoto makes comments that appear to target Pocketpair and Palworld amid legal actiontriggering strong opposition from the audience. in a Youtube video On September 27, Okamoto posted on his channel that Palworld “has crossed a line that shouldn't be crossed, and I don't want the world to be a place where this kind of thing is acceptable.”
Last month, Pocketpair announced Parr World: Parr Farm Just a week after Nintendo launches cozy farming sim Pokémon Pokopia. Pocketpair announced on September 16 that Palworld will release an official version 1.0 sometime in 2026.
At GDC in March, IGN spoke with Pocketpair communications director and publishing manager John “Bucky” Buckley This follows his presentation at the conference “Community Management Summit: The Palworld Rollercoaster: Surviving the Fall.” In that speech, Buckley candidly detailed some of Palworld's struggles, specifically accusations that it uses generative artificial intelligence and steals Pokemon models for its own Pals. he Even commented Regarding Nintendo's patent infringement lawsuit against the studio, calling it “shocking” and “no one thought about it.”
Verity Townsend is a Japanese freelance writer who worked as an editor, writer, and translator for the gaming news website Automaton West. She also writes about Japanese culture and film for various publications.