Japan's patent office has rejected a Nintendo application related to its Palworld lawsuit, citing a lack of originality. The decision raises questions about the validity of several Nintendo patents describing creature capture systems that are central to the company's complaint against Palworld.
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In late October 2025, the Japan Patent Office rejected Nintendo's patent application no. 2024-031879, which is related to the family of creature-capture patents that Palworld is accused of infringing. A JPO patent examiner found that the application lacks originality to be deemed an invention, citing prior art such as Monster Hunter 4, ARK: Survival Evolved, gacha browser game Kantai Collection, Pocketpair's own Craftopia, and even Pokemon GO. All of those were released prior to the December 2021 priority date from the rejected application.
Nintendo has 60 days from the date of its rejection notice to amend its application or appeal the decision, giving it until late December 2025 to do so. Since the application isn't cited in the Palworld patent lawsuit directly, its rejection won't have a direct impact on the ongoing case. However, as explained by Games Fray's analyst Florian Mueller, the newly rejected application is a "key building block" in Nintendo's strategy to capture a wide range of creature-capture system implementations. It is the child of patent JP7493117 and the parent of JP7545191, both of which are cited in Nintendo's complaint.
tl:dr;
The Nintendo v PalWorld lawsuit is still on going, but Nintendo has been told it's attempt to patent the concept of a capturable and summonable creature is invalid, in Japan.
As part of their ongoing lawsuit, Nintendo is claiming PalWorld has violated those... now invalid patents, so Nintendo's overall case against PalWorld is now significantly more weak.
The rejected patent is both a child, and parent of patents cited in the lawsuit.
Read that last quoted sentence again.
Or, preferably, the entire article, instead of just my attempt at summary.
So, sure, it doesn't directly effect JP7493117 in the case, as it came afterward... but it does make Nintendo's use of JP7545191 in the lawsuit look less credible.
That and the... entire fact that Nintendo is very obviously spamming the patent system.
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I'm getting this out of a translator:
The lawsuit against Palworld began on September 18 2024.
Here's that last actual patent, a child of the one just rejected.
https://www.j-platpat.inpit.go.jp/gazette_work/domestic/A/506149000/506149500/506149570/506149570/81172F8A4D01121A951168F211E11D1CE8AC3BF517A968A3D7D6F42FF3633488/JPA%202024149570-000000.pdf
Now, I am not a lawyer, don't speak barely any Japanese, and am certainly not a Japanese lawyer... but...
This is from the translated summary from the webportal, I am unable to directly link to that page as it is using java or wasm or something, but here's the header / part of the abstract:
(Reiwa roughly means Imperial Era, its kind of a cultural artefact / quirk of their calendar system. Reiwa 6 began in 2019.)
This patent (JP7545191) was published... after... Nintendo's lawsuit began.
Meaning that Palworld is being sued, at least in part, for violating a patent that did not exist prior to the start of the lawsuit, muchless prior to PalWorld's initial release, a patent which builds off of the failed patent that this article is saying was just struck down and would need to be appealed.
So... again not a lawyer, but that seems like insane bullshit that would piss off a judge, to me.
(The conversation continues... in https://kbin.melroy.org/m/games@sh.itjust.works/t/1284060/Nintendo-s-Creature-Capture-Patent-Dealt-Blow-Amid-Palworld-Lawsuit/comment/9813866#entry-comment-9813866 !)