Nintendo may have reinforced patents specifically to target Palworld’s game mechanics, expert suggests
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed a lawsuit against PocketPair over their hit monster-catching survival game Palworld on September 18. While the specific claims have yet to be disclosed, Nintendo alledges that Palworld infringes on multiple patents, seeking damages from the developer.
Last week, a Japanese patent expert narrowed down the possible patents the lawsuit may cover by analyzing the divisional patent applications jointly made by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company following Palworld’s launch. A new analysis published by Japan-based Patent Attorney Corporation Siarasia goes into further detail about how Nintendo has amended said patents to specifically target Palworld, examining whether there would have been grounds for an infringement lawsuit without these changes.
The report’s conclusion states, “We found that patents established before the release of Palworld did not necessarily correspond to the mechanics of Palworld, and that the patents submitted for examination after the release of Palworld worked to improve this.”
According to the article’s author Ryo Arashida, there are two patent families (collections of divided patents that cover a single invention) owned by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company that can be said to be related to Palworld. Patent family #1 includes five patents and one pending patent application. This series of patents is related to the mechanic of throwing a capture item at a character in the game field (i.e. a Poké Ball at a Pokémon) to capture it, as well as the mechanic of throwing a captured character at a character in the game field (i.e. an owned Pokémon at a wild Pokémon) to initiate a battle between the two. These are systems used in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
On the other hand, Patent family #2 includes three patents and one pending patent application that describe a system whereby the player can mount a mountable object to move across land, air and water. In other words, they describe Ride Pokémon, which also appear in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. As such, it makes sense that the earliest applications made for both patent families date to about one month prior to Arceus’s January 2022 release.
However, only one patent from patent family #1 and two patents from patent family #2 were registered prior to Palworld’s release. That means that a total of five patents from both families were applied for and granted a year later – after Palworld’s Early Access release in January 2023.
Arashida says that based on this timeline, it’s likely that the plaintiff’s side (Nintendo and The Pokémon Company) actually played Palworld, identified which of its systems correspond to the above-mentioned patent families and “pinpointed” what individual rights to obtain (that are within the scope of the original patent’s specifications).
Looking at the new divisional patents, Palworld can be said to possibly infringe upon multiple claims. For example, Patent No. 7493117, applied for on February 26, describes (among other processes related to catching Pokémon) an indicator that displays the probability of capture being judged as successful. In Palworld, when you aim a Pal Sphere at a Pal, success probability is displayed in a similar manner.
Then, Patent No. 7505854, which describes fighting wild Pokémon with owned Pokémon, includes details such as the stamina of the wild Pokémon being displayed to the player and capture success rate varying depending on the state (stamina) of the Pokémon. Palworld’s Pals can likewise be fought, and they possess an HP bar that turns red when lowered. In this state, the probablity of capturing a Pal increases.
Palworld’s mechanics related to mounting Pals overlap with many points of Nintendo’s Patent no. 7505854, including the player sustaining fall damage when unmounting a mountable character at a certain height in the sky.
But how do the patents registered before Palworld’s release compare? According to Arashida, Patent no. 7398425, the earliest patent from Family #1, describes a step in which the player “switches between a first and second mode” i.e. chooses by input whether they will throw a capture item at a Pokémon or initiate battle. The attorney says that this specification of “switching” between modes is not present in Palworld. Thus, the clause was deleted from the subsequent Patent no. 7398425, which was granted following Palworld’s launch.
Moreover, as mentioned earlier in the text, each of the patent families in question include one pending patent application. Nintendo and the Pokémon Company have not yet requested them to be examined. But what is the purpose of this? The attorney speculates that in the event PocketPair presents a counterargument against the current accusations or modifies Palworld’s mechanics to avoid similarities, these patent applications will be amended according to the situation to ensure infringement is not avoided – even with the change in game design. In other words, these patent applications may be Nintendo’s future counterattack against PocketPair.
