Nintendo sues videogame firm Pocketpair for creating ‘Pokemon with guns’

Nintendo Co., Ltd. together with The Pokémon Company, have filed a patent infringement lawsuit in the Tokyo District Court against Pocketpair, Inc. relating to their popular release Palworld.

Palworld was released in January 2024 and quickly earned a reputation for its similarities to the highly successful Pokémon games, branded ‘Pokémon with guns’.

The Pokémon franchise has an estimated $150bn in lifetime sales and Nintendo has been very protective of copyright in the computer and card games.

But Nintendo filing a patent dispute is interesting. In Europe, patent law excludes computer programs, stating that software components of video games won’t meet patent criteria. Japan does not exclude computer programs, but nevertheless any patent has to be novel and inventive to be granted.

It is not yet clear which of Nintendo’s 1,875 granted Japanese patents are being asserted. As of today, Pocketpair have issued a press release saying they do not know either. Online pundits are circulating a rumour that it is the game catching mechanic, involving aiming and launching a fighting character into the game (US2023191255A1), with others saying that patent hasn’t been granted, and was only filed by Nintendo after Palworld was previewed.

Those commentators are probably only looking in the US. That US patent application is a member of a wider patent family which already has 5 granted Japanese patents. Nintendo and the Pokémon company appear to have filed four “divisional” applications from the original patent filed in Japan, which are each variations based on what was originally filed. One of these was only filed in June 2024 and granted in September 2024 – that is very speedy work for a patent and must have taken some pressure on the Japanese patent office by their attorneys. This amount of activity does suggest that this is considered an important document by Nintendo.

If the rumours are correct, the patent claims appear to be about the use of inputs to control the aiming mechanism in the game, so could fall into the human-machine interface category rather than simply being rules of gameplay. Of course, there may be other patents being asserted here, as nearly all of Nintendo’s vast patent portfolio is related to video games.

Palworld first previewed in June 2021 before this patent was filed but was released to the public in January 2024. So a question may be whether they have prior use rights if the disputed features were already in the game before the patent was filed.

Having watched the Palworld preview video and release video, one thing I noticed is that there is something resembling a monster aiming and launching a mechanism that appears in the release video, but not the preview. So, it is possible that Palworld only developed the exact mechanic of interest after Nintendo’s patent filing. Identifying what counts as prior art in the world of computer games, button presses and aiming mechanisms is going to be hard, and that’s after the debate on whether a game mechanism has a real-world technical effect (if that requirement even applies in Japan).

There will be a lot of debate over the patentability of game mechanisms. There have been comments from the gamedev community that patents stifle innovation. This can be true of course with patent trolls, but if a company does invest a lot of time and money developing a new interface to make games work better, shouldn’t they be entitled to protect that? That is after all the intent of the whole patent system. Not being a Japanese patent attorney, I have no idea how this will play out, but it’s certainly going to be interesting.

At Pure Ideas, we are always ready to talk to you about your ideas and help you decide whether to apply for patents or other IP, and of course if you are concerned about infringing someone else’s.