The continued efforts of Nintendo and The Pokémon Company to use patents protecting certain gameplay mechanics to block out competition like Palworld has taken another L, as the company has been denied a patent for Poké Ball-style capture-and-release mechanics on touchscreen devices like phones and tablets.
You can check out Games Fray’s post on the matter for a breakdown of all the legalese, but to put it in layperson’s terms, Nintendo attempted to patent the use of a “touch panel” to “use a capture item for capturing a field character disposed in the field,” which essentially means any touch-screen game that has a Poké Ball–style capture device used to trap or release a “character owned by the player” so that they can perform “a battle with [a] field character.” Again, this is just describing Pokémon mechanics in the broadest terms possible in the hopes of getting a patent that could affect touch-screen games like the upcoming Palworld Mobile, coming to phones and tablets later this year.
The Japan Patent Office denied the application on the grounds that it didn’t include an “inventive step” or add any sort of new innovation beyond already common, established mechanics. Nintendo may amend the claim again after having already done so once back in February, but for now, it has been rejected.
Womp womp. The attempts by The Pokémon Company and Nintendo to undercut Palworld through patents have been an ongoing saga since 2024, when the company announced it was suing developer Pocketpair on the grounds of patent infringement following a months-long “investigation” launched shortly after the monster-taming survival game was released in January of 2024. At the time, fans were primarily concerned about Palworld’s monsters seemingly ripping off the designs of multiple Pokémon, but rather than focusing on this in its legal action, Nintendo instead decided to use patents as a way to try to get the upper hand. Presumably this was because Palworld’s obviously Pokémon-inspired designs likely fall under Parody Law. So far, the legal cockswinging hasn’t gone in the company’s favor.
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