At the time, IP expert Florian Mueller took to social media<\/a> to say Nintendo \u201cshould never\u201d have received a “summon character and let it fight” patent in the first place, while video game patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon told PC Gamer<\/a> “these claims were in no way allowable.”<\/p>\n Nintendo and The Pok\u00e9mon Company are currently embroiled in ongoing litigation with Pocketpair’s Palworld<\/a> in Japan, and patents are at the heart of the lawsuit. This particular patent sums up how Pok\u00e9mon games work in that you summon Pok\u00e9mon to battle other Pok\u00e9mon in the hope of adding them to your collection. But, as was pointed out last year, there are countless other games that use similar mechanics, such as Persona, Digimon, and even Elden Ring, depending upon how the patent is interpreted.<\/p>\n Games fray<\/a> reported that the USPTO rejected all claims of the patent in question, based on \u201dprior art\u201d references in the form of published U.S. patent applications. Games fray said two of those earlier patent applications were filed by Nintendo itself, and one each by Konami and Bandai Namco.<\/p>\n It\u2019s worth noting that this rejection is non-final, so there\u2019s a long way to go before Nintendo accepts the decision. It may appeal, for example, which would drag this out even longer. But what will be of most importance is its potential impact on the lawsuit with Pocketpair, which has gone quiet since October last year.<\/p>\n The Best Pok\u00e9mon Spin-off Games Palworld launched on Steam priced $30 and straight into Game Pass on Xbox and PC early 2024, breaking sales and concurrent player number records in the process. Pocketpair boss Takuro Mizobe has said Palworld’s launch was so big that the developer couldn\u2019t handle the massive profits the game generated<\/a>. Still, Pocketpair acted swiftly to capitalize on Palworld\u2019s breakout success, signing a deal with Sony<\/a> to form a new business called Palworld Entertainment that\u2019s tasked with expanding the IP. It later launched the game on PS5.<\/p>\n After Palworld\u2019s huge launch, comparisons were made between Palworld\u2019s Pals and Pok\u00e9mon, with some accusing Pocketpair of “ripping off” Pok\u00e9mon designs. But rather than file a copyright infringement lawsuit, Nintendo and The Pok\u00e9mon Company went down the patent route. They want 5 million yen (approx $32,846) each plus late payment damages, as well as an injunction against Palworld that would block its release.<\/p>\n The case involves three main patents<\/a> granted in Japan: two related to monster capture and release, and one related to riding characters. All three patents were filed in 2024, after Palworld came out. However, they are actually derived from earlier Nintendo patents dating from 2021. In other words, it seems that once Palworld exploded onto the scene, Nintendo filed divisional patents that were geared to fight specifically against Palworld\u2019s alleged infringement of the original patents.<\/p>\n Since then, Pocketpair has made changes<\/a> to Palworld\u2019s disputed mechanics. A November 2024 patch, for example, removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pok\u00e9ball-like Pal Spheres. In May last year, another Palworld update changed how you can glide in the game. At the time, Pocketpair said it was being forced to patch Palworld due the lawsuit<\/a>.<\/p>\n The case has rumbled on, with Nintendo even rewriting a mount-related patent mid-lawsuit<\/a>, and arguing that mods should not count as prior art<\/a>.<\/p>\n All eyes will be on Presiding Judge Motoyuki Nakashima, who leads the patent division of the Tokyo District Court. Meanwhile, Pocketpair has continued to update Palworld as it prepares for its 1.0 launch.<\/p>\n At the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March 2025, IGN sat down for an extended conversation with John \u201cBucky\u201d Buckley, communications director and publishing manager for Palworld developer Pocketpair<\/a>. We spoke following his talk at the conference, ‘Community Management Summit: A Palworld Roller Coaster: Surviving the Drop.’ During that talk, Buckley went into candid detail about a number of Palworld\u2019s struggles, especially the accusations of it using generative AI and stealing Pokemon\u2019s models for its own Pals. He even commented<\/a> on Nintendo\u2019s patent infringement lawsuit against the studio, saying it \u201ccame as a shock\u201d and was \u201csomething that no one even considered.\u201d<\/p>\n Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The USPTO has rejected Nintendo\u2019s controversial ‘summon character and let it fight’ Pok\u00e9mon patent, after it was heavily…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[59,86,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-507517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-gb","9":"tag-technology","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n