The Pokémon Patent Lawsuit Against Palworld: Claims and Setbacks

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s patent lawsuit against Palworld was filed on September 18, 2024, in the Tokyo District Court, and it accuses Pocketpair of infringing three Japanese patents covering creature-capture and riding mechanics used in Pokémon games. The plaintiffs are seeking an injunction and 10 million yen (roughly $60,000 to $66,000) in damages, split evenly between them, plus late-payment interest.¹ As of mid-2026, the case is still active, the game is still on sale, and the court is expected to signal its preliminary views in November 2026.

The Three Patents Nintendo Is Asserting

The suit is built on three Japanese patents, all claiming a priority date of December 22, 2021. They were filed as divisional applications and granted in 2024, after Palworld‘s January 2024 early-access launch — a timing point critics have seized on, arguing Nintendo “opportunistically filed for derivative patents that were designed to read on Palworld.”²

The three patents cover:

JP7545191, the “catch-and-fight” patent. It describes a system where the player selects between capture items and combat characters using different buttons, aims, and releases them, with the game either resolving a capture attempt or letting the released fighter act autonomously.³
JP7493117, the “capture indicator” patent. It covers aiming and throwing a capture item while an on-screen indicator shows the probability of success.³
JP7528390, the “riding” patent. It covers riding one creature on the ground and, once airborne, switching to a flying mount.³

The three patents are widely understood to trace back to mechanics in Pokémon Legends: Arceus. IP consultant Florian Mueller has said Nintendo “is not asserting patents on genuine technological inventions” but is trying to “monopolize game rules.”³

How Pocketpair Is Defending Itself

Pocketpair’s initial reaction was that the lawsuit “came as a shock” and was “something that no one even considered,” according to communications director John “Bucky” Buckley.⁴ The company was not told at filing which specific patents were at issue and said it would “continue to assert our position in this case through future legal proceedings.”¹

Its defense runs on two tracks. On the legal side, Pocketpair is attacking the validity of Nintendo’s patents by pointing to prior art. Preparatory briefs filed in February 2025 identify existing mechanics in ARK: Survival Evolved, Monster Hunter 4, Kantai Collection, Pokémon GO, and Pocketpair’s own earlier game Craftopia.⁵ Pocketpair has also cited game mods, including Pocket Souls (a Dark Souls 3 mod), Pixelmon (a Minecraft mod), and NukaMon (a Fallout 4 mod).⁶

On the practical side, Pocketpair has been patching Palworld to work around the patents. In November 2024, a patch removed the ability to summon creatures by throwing “Pal Spheres” and replaced it with a static summon next to the player. In May 2025, gliding was reworked so players use an equippable glider instead of riding a flying creature. Pocketpair called these “compromises” needed to prevent “further disruptions to the development of Palworld,” and acknowledged the changes were “disappointing” and hurt the gameplay experience.⁷

Do Game Mods Count as Prior Art?

One unusual legal question has emerged from Pocketpair’s defense: whether fan-made mods qualify as prior art under Japanese patent law. Nintendo has formally told the Tokyo District Court that they should not, because mods cannot run independently of the base game they modify.⁶ Pocketpair’s counter is that the real test should be whether developers would look to mods when designing mechanics, which is common in the industry.

Mueller has called Nintendo’s position “almost insulting” and “extreme,” noting that patent law defines prior art broadly and courts generally resist narrowing that pool. Commentators have flagged the stakes: if the court sides with Nintendo, large studios could patent mechanics first invented by modders, who almost never file patents themselves. Counter-Strike, which began as a Half-Life mod in 1999, has been raised as the kind of innovation that would be vulnerable under such a rule.⁸ The judge has not yet ruled on the question.

Nintendo’s Setbacks at the Patent Offices

The lawsuit has not been going smoothly for Nintendo at the patent offices where its underlying rights are being tested.

Japan

In October 2025, the Japan Patent Office rejected Nintendo’s application no. 2024-031879, a sibling within the same patent family as those asserted in the lawsuit. Examiner Kazumasa Nakamura found the application lacked an “inventive step,” concluding its mechanics could have been easily conceived by someone skilled in game design given the prior art from ARK: Survival Evolved, Monster Hunter 4, Craftopia, Kantai Collection, and Pokémon GO. A third-party submission earlier in 2025 had introduced those references.⁹ The decision does not directly bind the Tokyo court, but it points to validity problems across the family.

In April 2026, the JPO also rejected Nintendo application no. 2026-019762, a divisional targeting touchscreen-based capture. The examiner wrote that the concept amounted to “simply a general monster-catching rule set” with “nothing technologically innovative about it.”¹⁰ Nintendo can still amend and resubmit.¹¹

United States

Across the Pacific, the USPTO granted Nintendo U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397 — the “summon subcharacter and let it fight” patent — in September 2025, prompting immediate criticism from IP lawyers who said the claims were “in no way allowable.”¹² In November 2025, USPTO Director John Squires personally ordered an ex parte reexamination, citing two prior-art references, including a 2002 Konami application. Director-initiated reexaminations are rare and may have been the first since 2012.¹³

In March 2026, the examiner rejected all 26 claims as obvious, combining Nintendo’s own earlier filings with published applications from Konami and Bandai Namco.¹⁴ The rejection is non-final, and Nintendo’s response was due by June 25, 2026, with a possible extension to September 2026.¹⁵ Mueller has said full revocation looks “highly likely.”¹⁶

What It Means for Palworld and Its Players

In November 2025, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company amended their complaint to limit their infringement claims to older versions of Palworld. In effect, that concedes Pocketpair’s patches removed or altered enough of the targeted mechanics that current builds are no longer in scope.¹⁷ Legal observers say the practical risk of an injunction against current or future versions is gone, and any damages would be limited to Japanese sales of the older builds. Mueller estimates that a Nintendo win would translate to roughly 5 million yen (about $30,000), which he calls “chump change” next to what both sides are spending on lawyers.⁴

The game itself has not been pulled from any platform. Palworld is still available on Steam, Xbox (including Game Pass), and PlayStation 5, and Pocketpair has scheduled the full 1.0 release, ending early access, for July 10, 2026.¹⁸

One boundary worth noting: this is a Japanese lawsuit. Nintendo has been building a U.S. patent portfolio covering similar mechanics, but as of mid-2026 it has not sued Pocketpair in the United States.¹⁹

Where the Case Stands

The case is before Judge Motoyuki Nakashima in Civil Division 40 of the Tokyo District Court, filed under case number Reiwa 6 (Wa) No. 70421.²⁰ A technical briefing and evidence presentation is scheduled for October 1, 2026, followed by a November 9, 2026 session at which the court is expected to indicate its preliminary views.¹⁷ No settlement has been reported. In its September 2024 announcement, Nintendo signaled it intends to “continue to take necessary actions against any infringement of its intellectual property rights.”²¹

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Windows Central. Nintendo Tells Japanese Court That Mods Don’t Count as Prior Art
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Patent Arcade. Nintendo Files Patent Application Directed to Touchscreen Creature Capture
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IGN. USPTO Rejects Nintendo’s Controversial ‘Summon Character and Let It Fight’ Pokemon Patent
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Games Fray. Head of U.S. Patent Office Takes Rare Step to Order Reexamination
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Games Fray. U.S. Patent Examiner Rejects Nintendo’s ‘Summon Subcharacter and Let It Fight’ Patent as Obvious
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IGN. US Patent Office Boss Orders Reexamination of Nintendo’s Controversial ‘Summon Character and Let It Fight’ Pokémon Patent
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Automaton Media. Nintendo and The Pokemon Company Have Reportedly Narrowed Palworld Lawsuit to Older Versions
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GamesIndustry.biz. Palworld Leaving Early Access Amidst Ongoing Nintendo Lawsuit
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GamesIndustry.biz. US Patent Office Rejects Nintendo’s ‘Summon Subcharacter and Let It Fight’ Patent
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