A new patent has been published in the US that sounds very similar to one of the Japanese patents which Pocketpair was alleged to have infringed upon in Nintendo's ongoing lawsuit against the Palworld developer.
Last September, Nintendo and The Pokemon Company filed a patent infringement lawsuit against Pocketpair in Japan. Pocketpair later revealed that it was alleged to have infringed upon three patents which all appear to cover certain game mechanics, from Legends: Arceus Pokeball-style catching mechanics to one related to riding around on characters (again, like the Ride Pokemon in Legends: Arceus).
Official updates on the lawsuit from Pocketpair and Nintendo have been quiet since, but as spotted by Games Fray, Nintendo appears to have been busy behind the scenes with patents in the US that also seem to describe Pokeball-throwing actions.
Before we get into the oh-so-dense meat of this, it's important to note that, as it stands, the Palworld lawsuit is in Japan only, based on Japanese patents. Since patents are territorial rights, Nintendo can only use Japanese patents in a lawsuit in Japan, hence why it'd need to have separately registered US patents in order to file a US lawsuit. This US patent doesn't guarantee a supplementary lawsuit, but it could open the door to further legal action in the US.
The new patent in question (which you can view on the United States Patent and Trademark Office site) was published yesterday after being filed back in July last year, and ties back (via patent technicalities called divisions and continuations) to a December 2021 parent patent. Games Fray reports this 2021 parent is the same one that two of the divisional patents in the actual Japanese Palworld lawsuit tie into.
The new US patent describes in a very complicated way different "modes" that allow the player to throw an item – such as "a catching item" used for capturing a character on "the field," or launch "a fighting character" to battle against something else. It's easy to get lost in the elaborate language, but imagine Legends: Arceus' gameplay which allows you to throw spare Pokeballs at wild encounters to catch them, or throw your own Pokemon at them to initiate an actual battle.
If you've been keeping up with the Palworld lawsuit situation for some time, then this will all sound rather familiar. In fact, this patent is very similar to another US Nintendo patent which was published right at the end of last year – it describes very similar stuff but with some different terminology.
What does this mean for Palworld and developer Pocketpair? At the moment, potentially nothing – no lawsuit outside the one in Japan has been filed, and we don't know if Nintendo or The Pokemon Company plans further action. However, it's interesting to see these two new patents be successfully published at all – back when the Palworld lawsuit began, one patent attorney claimed that software inventions are more likely to be considered "abstract ideas" in the US than they are in Japan, and may not be eligible for patent at all under different requirements. But these demonstrably cleared the bar just fine.
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