Nintendo and Palworld drama “non -ending” drama
As is known, Nintendo is in a legal battle with Pocketpair – Palworld developer, about patent violations. In a summary, the Palworld game right from its launch has too many “coincidental” points with Nintendo's Pokémon IP. Therefore, Nintendo could not sit still, determined to sue Pocketpair to the end during the last year 2024.
While the lawsuit is mainly in Japan with a claim for more than $ 66,000, Nintendo is moving to expand the war to the United States. However, recently, the American Patent Office and Trademark (USPTO) rejected 22 out of the 23 patent requests of Nintendo, only approving a request related to the process of “seeing and catching characters”.
Source: GameSfray.
This shows that the “struggle” process of Nintendo in the US will be much more difficult than Japan. However, Nintendo still did not give up, they continued to submit new patents, including a newly -granted patent on February 11, 2025, related to “character arrest methods”, “Probability of success” and “how to display characters in the game”.
Which future for Nintendo's lawsuit?
Florian Mueller, a famous German legal expert, said that Nintendo is more difficult than expected in protecting intellectual property rights in the US. However, they persisted in pursuing the lawsuit. If Nintendo succeeds, this can create a worrying precedent for the gaming industry, affecting games using the same mechanism and can inhibit creativity in the development process New game.
Currently, no official lawsuit has been submitted in the US, but Nintendo is preparing the necessary legal platform. If the lawsuit in Japan is successful, it is likely that they will continue to expand the war in the US. This will be a sign of a new wave of patent lawsuits in the game industry, making developers more cautious when building game mechanisms.
