Pal World developers Pocketpair have finally revealed which patents Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are suing them for. It appears they are focusing on the act of casting capsule items to capture or release monsters, along with using monsters as mounts.
If you haven’t come across Palworld yet, it’s a bestseller survival game that takes heavy – some would say, outrageous – inspiration from Pokémon, with players hunting Pokésque creatures using magical orbs and positioning them as soldiers and minions.
When Palworld arrived on Steam in January, there were protests from some Pokémon players that it had Pokemon copyright broken. After an ominous interlude, Nintendo announced legal proceedings against Pocketpair in Septemberstating that the company would “continue to take necessary action against any infringement of its intellectual property rights, including the Nintendo brand itself, to protect the intellectual properties it has worked hard to establish over the years.”
Instead of going after Palworld’s monster designs, which definitely look a lot like certain Pokémon, Nintendo claims that Pocketpair has broken its patents on specific game mechanics. They didn’t specify which patents at the time, but Pocketpair has now listed three in one publish published today. They also report that Nintendo and the Pokémon Company are seeking an injunction against Palworld, along with damages for late payment for the use of their patents.
The formatting of Pocketpair’s post doesn’t make clear the exact amount requested in damages – it could be that Nintendo and the Pokémon Company want five million yen each, or that they want five million yen in total. For clarity, the Pokémon Company is not a subsidiary of Nintendo, but the result of a joint investment by the companies that own the Pokémon copyrights and trademarks – Game Freak, Creatures and Nintendo.
“Plaintiffs allege that “Palworld”, launched by us on January 19, 2024, infringes the following three patents held by Plaintiffs and are seeking an injunction against the game and compensation for a portion of the damages incurred between the date of registration of the patents and the filing date of this action”, says the post.
The patents in question were all filed and filed this year, following Palworld’s early access launch, although they appear to be based on older “parent” patents. They are: Patent nº 7545191, requested on July 30th and registered on August 27th; Patent nº 7493117, requested on February 26th and registered on May 22nd, and Patent nº 7528390, requested on March 5th and registered on July 26th.
I looked at the patent numbers on Japanese Platform for Patent Informationalso known as J-PlatPat, which has automatic translation from Japanese to English. Here are their auto-translated overviews. There is much more detail on each patent page, of course, including diagrams, but this should give you a rough indication.
Patent No. 7545191
“Determine, in a first mode, an aiming direction in a virtual space based on a second operating input, and cause, in a second mode, a player character to throw, in the aiming direction, an item that affects a field character placed on a field in virtual space based on a third operation input. Based on the second operation input, the aiming direction is determined, and based on the third operation input, the player character is taken to. shoot the battle character in the direction of the aim.”Patent No. 7493117
“An aiming direction within a virtual space is determined based on the second operating input. In a first mode, a player character can release an item that affects a field character disposed on a field within a virtual space toward the aiming direction based on the third operation input, an aiming direction is determined based on the second operation input in a second mode, and the game character can release a fighting character who fights in the aiming direction based on the third input of operation.”Patent No. 7528390
“In an example game program, a ground or air piloting object is selected by a select operation, and a player character is required to ride the selected piloting object. In the case where the player character riding the object piloting object moves toward the ground, a change is automatically made to a state in which the player character rides the piloting object toward the ground, so that the player character can move on the ground.”
Pocketpair is not backing down. “We will continue to assert our position in this case through future legal proceedings”, they write in the new post. They’re also not responding to individual media inquiries at this time – we’ll all hear more via their website.
Update: I added a line to clarify that while the above patents appear to have been filed this year, they are based on older patents that predate Palworld’s early access launch.
