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Pocketpair Presents Strong Defense Against Nintendo’s Palworld Lawsuit

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On April 18, 2025

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Summary

Pocketpair responded to Nintendo’s Palworld patent complaint in two stages.
The Palworld developer argued both invalidity and non-infringement in the face of the patent lawsuit.
The non-infringement arguments will only come into play if Pocketpair fails to successfully argue that Nintendo’s patents at the center of the lawsuit are invalid.

Pocketpair has presented a comprehensive, multi-argument defense against Nintendo’s Palworld lawsuit. The Palworld developer’s response to Nintendo’s patent complaint references a variety of games, ranging from Octopath Traveler to Far Cry 5.

In September 2024, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company sued Pocketpair in Japan, alleging that Palworld infringes on several of their jointly held patents. The Palworld developer publicly vowed to fight the lawsuit but has shared no details on how it intends to do so.

Palworld Depresso Pal in front of Mario getting ready to throw a punch on red background 2x1 composite

Another Nintendo Lawsuit Against Palworld Might Be Close, Expert Says

Some new evidence suggests that Nintendo could be planning to launch yet another patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld soon.

The first concrete information on the company’s defense strategy has now emerged via Games Fray, who obtained Pocketpair’s initial response to the lawsuit from the Tokyo District Court. The company targeted each of the three patents from the patent family at the center of the Palworld complaint with both invalidity and non-infringement arguments.

Palworld’s Prior Art Defense Against Patent JP7545191

In regard to claims relating to patent JP7545191, which describes a system for capturing creatures and releasing creatures into battle, Pocketpair argued that none of its elements were new at the time of its late 2021 filing. The company used its prior game, Craftopia, to illustrate this claim, arguing that while it doesn’t do everything Nintendo’s patent describes, it could easily be combined with features from other existing games to arrive at the same result. The company also cited Titanfall 2, Far Cry 5, Tomb Raider, and Octopath Traveler among prior titles whose systems overlap with patent JP7545191, and which could be combined with Craftopia to end up with Palworld‘s creature capture system.

Palworld’s Prior Art Defense Against Patents JP7493117 and JP7528390

Pocketpair made a similar claim in response to patent JP7493117, which describes a system for aiming a capture item and calculating creature capture chances. Here, the company’s invalidity argument starts with Dark Souls 3 mod Pocket Souls, which allows players to capture enemies and use them against one another. Pocketpair said that combining its ideas with Craftopia, the Fallout 4 mod NukaMon, Monster Super League, or Nexomon would have been enough to arrive at mechanics similar to those in Palworld. The final part of the developer’s prior art defense is aimed at patent JP7528390, which describes a system for switching ridable objects—such as Pals or Pokemon—on the fly. Here, Pocketpair points to ARK as an obvious case of prior art that doesn’t even need to be combined with anything else to render Nintendo’s patent invalid.

Pocketpair also made multiple non-infringement arguments against each of the three patents in the lawsuit. These will only come into play if the company fails to successfully argue invalidity. The non-infringement arguments were submitted to the Tokyo District Court on January 31, 2025, whereas the invalidity defense followed on February 21.