Nintendo And The Pokémon Company’s ‘Palworld’ Lawsuit Is Based On Mechanic Patents – So Why Aren’t They Going After Pocketpair’s Previous Title ‘Craftopia’?
While The Pokémon Company and Nintendo’s recently announced lawsuit against Pocketpair’s Palworld amended their patents “pinpointing” Pocketpair’s Palworld, yet Craftopia utilized monster catching and riding before them.
As previously reported, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company (TPC) have sued Pocketpair for patent infringement over Palworld. However, the Japanese titans are currently remaining tight-lipped regarding the lawsuit’s specifics, with even Pocketpair themselves unaware of just which patents they are accused of infringing.
Speaking to Yahoo Japan, as translated by Automaton, Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara speculated, “If there is a common point, it is the mechanic whereby you throw a ball-like object at monsters to capture them. If there is any patent infringement to speak of, I think it would be this.”
To this end, it appears there are four ‘divisional’ patents – essentially, a patent for the specific elements that make-up a previously patented concept or item – all of which were filed in Japan between February and July of this year and could be used by Nintendo and TPC for their lawsuit:
- Patent No. 7545191 (US No. 20230191255A1, currently pending) concerns the general mechanics of catching a creature or NPC, which entails the use of direct input from the player, showing the player their chance of success, determining if it was successful under various criteria, and then changing that creature from an enemy to being ‘owned’ by the player. (Interestingly, diagrams attached to the patent show a player catching a dinosaur in a Pokéball, with the player model being shown using what appears to be the Pokéball Plus controller from Pokémon: Let’s Go Pikachu and Eevee.)
- Patents No. 7493117 (US No. 2023191255) and 7505854 (US No. 2024278129), both of which regard the very ‘fine print’ specifics of the above ‘Catch & Redeploy’ patent.
- Patent No. 7528390 (US No. 20230191254) handles the idea of a player actively switching between various modes of transportation across various environments – for example, as gliding on a flying creature then automatically switching to a climbing creature when you hit a wall – as seen in practice in Pokémon Legends: Arceus.
Notably, the dates of the patents and divisional patents is where things get interesting. Per Kurihara, even if they are filed well after the original, divisional patents can be enforced via the date of the parent patent’s approval.
In this case, Patent No. 7545191was filed on July 30th of this year, with Nintendo and TPC requesting an accelerated examination on August 6th, before it was ultimately approved on August 22nd.
Likewise, the other three patents were filed on February 6th, February 26th, and March 5th respectively, with registration approval subsequently being given on June 17th, May 30th, and July 26th.
Given that Palworld launched (albeit in Early Access) on January 19th, well before all the divisional patents were filed, one would assume they would be in the clear.
However, as their parent patent was officially registered all the way back on December 22nd, 2021, all of them can cite that day as their ‘original filing date’.
Offering his read of the situation, Kurihara notes that it is the first listed patent, which he describes as a “killer patent”, that will be at the center of the case, as “It seems like it would be hard to avoid if you want to make a Pokémon-like game, and it’s easy to infringe if you’re not careful.”
“It is believed that the scope of rights of the divisional application of the existing patent was amended to ‘pull in’ the composition of the allegedly infringing property for use in litigation, a technique commonly referred to as ‘fitting in,’ ” Kurihara elaborated. “In terms of timing, it seems natural to assume that the lawsuit was filed pending the grant of these patents.”
In a separate report, as translated by Automaton, Japan Patent Attorney Corporation Siarasia drew a similar conclusion, noting, “We found that patents established before the release of Palworld did not necessarily correspond to the mechanics of Palworld, and that the patents submitted for examination after the release of Palworld worked to improve this.”
Providing an analysis for the report, Siarasia’s Ryo Arashida theorizes that Nintendo may have created the other patents specifically after playing Palworld and “pinpointed” what they could add to the original patents (such as chance of success in catching creature being displayed).
In support of this argument, Arashida points out how the original patent for the Catch & Redeploy mechanic mentions switching between modes (whether to throw a ball to catch, or throw a creature to battle), but after the launch of Palworld, the patent was amended to remove any specific mention of ‘mode switching’.
The analyst even speculates that the pending patents, which The Pokémon Company have requested to not yet be examined, will be further modified depending on how the case unfolds.
Yet, while Palworld seems to be Nintendo and TPC’s main target, this decision curiously ignore the fact that this is not the first of Pocketpair’s games to feature creature catching and riding.
In the most recent episode of their video game-centric YouTube series Necro News, Vtuber Eleanor ‘Elle’ Briarwood and her husband Booster raised a key detail that others have widely overlooked: Pocketpair’s Craftopia.
[Disclaimer: This article’s author has assisted in the production of videos for Necro News.]
[Time Stamp: 01:03]
Featuring gameplay similar to Palworld wherein players are invited to tame animals with ‘Prism Balls‘ and ride them around an open world, Cratfopia launched on September 4th, 2020 – well before Nintendo filed even the initial application for their Catch & Redeploy patent.
What this means for Pocketpair’s upcoming legal battle remains anyone’s guess, but at the very least, it is an interesting element to keep aware of in the coming months. At the very least, it suggests that Nintendo and TPC’s decision to file their lawsuit was not primarily based on the mere act of infringement, but because the infringing product has found massive success.
The mainline Pokémon games have been criticized ever since the 3DS era (2013) for having less features, developers blaming that on time spent improving graphics which turn out to be lackluster, and numerous bugs. All while Pokémon is supposed to be the highest grossing media franchise.
Meanwhile Palworld has become a smash-hit with a fraction of TPC’s hypothetical budget, achieving 25 million players just one month after launch.
The timing of the game’s launch and Pokémon fans’ growing frustrations with The Pokémon Company created the perfect storm. Fans championed Palworld not because they want a Pokémon game just like it, but because it gave players far more with far less.
Interestingly, despite this legal debacle, it seems both Pocketpair continuing on in the game’s production, as Palworld surprise launched onto the PlayStation 5 on September 24th – or at least, that’s the case in the west, as it’s Japanese launch has been “not yet been decided.”
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