Nintendo Denied Patent Related to Palworld Lawsuit

Experts from the agency reviewed Nintendo's application. They were clearly not impressed.

It recently became known that the Japan Patent Office decided to reject Nintendo and The Pokemon Company's application number 2026-019762. It was dedicated to the game mechanic of catching monsters. This was one of the documents that appeared in the lawsuit with the developers of the sensational game Palworld.

One of the key factors for denying the patent was a recording of the fan project Pokemon Generations, which was published in 2013. This video shows a player selecting a "pokeball," then aiming and throwing it at a creature — and catching it (it enters this "ball").

In this regard, the agency's expert concluded that the mechanic existed before Nintendo filed the patent application, meaning the company cannot patent it. Nintendo tried to dispute this — pointing out that Pokemon Generations infringes copyright (illegally uses characters and other images).

The patent office rejected such an argument. Users noted the expert's clear irritation.

Nintendo, in its objections, wrote that copyright infringement of the image should be indicated: "Ash, Pikachu, and Pokeball [from this video] should be correctly referred to as 'character infringing Ash's image rights,' 'character infringing Pikachu's image rights,' and 'character infringing Pokeball's image rights,' respectively."

In response, the expert wrote:

If it is impermissible to use character names in the grounds for rejection, then even at the cost of redundancy, accuracy should be prioritized above all else. In such a case, the notification would have to use cumbersome descriptions such as "object in the shape of a small animal" instead of Pokemon, "object in the shape of a boy in a red cap" instead of Ash, "object in the shape of a small yellow animal" instead of Pikachu, "object in the shape of a small green animal" instead of Bulbasaur, and "spherical object with a red upper half and a white lower half" instead of Pokeball. However, even with such a rephrasing, the logical structure of the grounds for rejection remains unchanged. Therefore, this argument does not affect the determination of inventive step.

Meanwhile, Palworld itself is doing very well. This summer, Pocketpair studio successfully released the full version 1.0 — the game received many positive reviews from gamers on Steam.