JPO rejects key Nintendo patent in Palworld lawsuit

The Japan Patent Office has rejected a key Nintendo patent application central to the company’s lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair, issuing a decision in late October 2025 that the claimed creature-capture system lacks an inventive step. The rejected application, numbered 2024031879, is part of a patent family tied to multiple filings Nintendo and The Pokemon Company are asserting in the Tokyo District Court in their dispute over Palworld, a game released in January 2024 that mixes monster-taming with survival and crafting mechanics.

The JPO examiner concluded that the mechanics described in the application would have been obvious to a person skilled in the field based on earlier public works, citing prior examples that include ARK: Survival Evolved, Monster Hunter 4, Craftopia, Kantai Collection, and Pokémon GO. The office’s record also shows a third-party submission presenting prior art that influenced the rejection; the submitter was not named in the JPO record. Pocketpair previously filed extensive evidence in court and administrative proceedings listing earlier games and player-created mods to argue that similar mechanics predated Nintendo’s filings.