Nintendo patent lawsuit could be tipped in Palworld’s favor by a GTA5 mod from 8 years ago, Japanese attorney suggests
Earlier this month, Pocketpair publicly revealed some details of the patent infringement lawsuit filed against them by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, including the specific patents their hit survival game Palworld is being accused of infringing.
The new information confirmed hypotheses put forward by legal experts, as it named three divisional patents (new child patents of a bigger, existing patent) Nintendo and The Pokémon Company jointly filed for following Palworld’s Early Access release in January this year. Nintendo’s side moved swiftly to reinforce their patents through these divisional applications for use in litigation against Pocketpair, taking their first action on February 6, just 18 days after the game launched.
As an analyst described it, it’s likely that Nintendo’s side “actually played Palworld, identified which of its systems correspond to their existing patent families and ‘pinpointed’ what individual rights to obtain (that are within the scope of the original patent’s specifications).”
As a result, Nintendo has a strong case. But at the same time, Ryo Arashida, representative patent attorney from the Japan-based Patent Attorney Corporation Siarasia is quoted by the Nikkei Business Online Edition as saying that while the outcome of the lawsuit is unclear, there’s a certain game mod out there that could work in Palworld’s favor.
The mod in question is a fan-made one, designed to be a crossover between Pokémon and Rockstar Games’s Grand Theft Auto V (GTA5). Arashida does not specify the exact mod, but mentions that it was released publicly around 2016 and includes the mechanic of throwing Poke Ball-like objects at characters on the game field to capture them. Given the description, it is likely that he is referring to this elaborate mod inspired by Niantic’s Pokémon GO from August 2016.
According to Arashida, the Pokémon capturing sequence used in this mod is similar to the one described in one of the divisional patents (Patent No. 7545191) Nintendo is suing Palworld over. Moreover, the parent patent that this divisional patent belongs to was registered in December 2021, meaning the GTA5 mod came out several years earlier. Arashida believes that “there is a possibility that the GTA5 Pokémon mod will be recognized as a precedent by the court.” If this were to happen, one of the patents Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are using in litigation against Pocketpair would be deemed invalid.
Meanwhile, as patent rights are only valid in the country where they were granted, this specific lawsuit and its potential effects on Palworld are regionally limited to Japan at present. However, based on patents currently pending approval overseas, analysts believe it’s safe to assume that Nintendo and The Pokémon Company are preparing to bring up a similar case in the US too. This would potentially have a larger impact on Pocketpair, as Palworld’s playerbase in the US is far bigger than in Japan. On the other hand, the Nintendo side may have a harder time making a case in the US due to how much stricter the US system is towards approving software-related inventions.
