Underlined terms, unless they specifically reference another article, point to our own dictionary-style definitions.
Context:
- We’ve been following the Nintendo v. Pocketpair (effectively, Pokémon v. Palworld) patent case from a distance, and have previously asked locals to go to the Tokyo District Court on our behalf to inspect the record (September 16, 2025 games fray article). games fray‘s patent-focused sibling site ip fray also keeps an eye on developments in that increasingly interesting forum (May 24, 2026 ip fray article).
- In parallel to the Japanese infringement lawsuit that started in 2024, Nintendo has been trying to obtain additional patents that it could potentially assert against Palworld in new cases. But both the Japan Patent Office (JPO) (October 29, 2025 games fray article, and with a view to Palworld Mobile: May 14, 2026 games fray article) and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) (April 1, 2026 games fray article) have lately grown skeptical of Nintendo’s game-rule patent applications.
- Pocketpair raised various defenses, but also made various changes to Palworld’s gameplay mechanics to work around Nintendo’s patents-in-suit.
What’s new:
- The public record strongly suggests that the parties have completed their written pleadings and the submission of evidence, such as expert reports.
- The court has scheduled a presentation of evidence for October 1, and will express an opinion on November 9, 2026.
- Nintendo initially targeted all Palworld versions, but in November 2025, the plaintiffs (Nintendo and The Pokémon Company) amended the scope of their claims (in terms of what they are seeking from the court, not in terms of a patent claim) so that the case is now limited to older versions of Palworld (i.e., before Pocketpair made changes to eliminate patent exposure).
Direct impact:
- Based on the narrowed scope of the case, we cannot see any pathway to victory over any current or very recent Palworld version (nor Palworld 1.0, which should launch soon) for Nintendo. There will be no injunction with real-world impact.
- All that is left of Nintendo’s case at this stage relates to old versions of Palworld. Even if — which is far from a given — Nintendo overcame all of the usual hurdles (defending its patents against Pocketpair’s invalidity contentions, proving infringement, and ultimately proving that any damage was caused by the alleged infringement), the most it could get is JPY 5 million, the equivalent of $30K. That is chump change for either party, and just a rounding error compared to Nintendo’s litigation expenses.
Wider ramifications: Palworld 1.0 is going to launch soon, and given that Nintendo’s patent assertions can’t impact that release in any meaningful way, the question is whether Nintendo will recognize that patents are not the answer to competition in this space or bring additional lawsuits against Pocketpair. The fact that Nintendo is finded it increasingly hard to obtain game-rule patents in key jurisdictions may dissuade Nintendo (and possibly also other companies in the games industry) from filing any further lawsuits of this kind.
We discussed Pocketpair’s defenses on prior occasions. In the further proceedings, Pocketpair submitted expert opinions by former judges to counter Nintendo’s accusations.
Normally, this case would now be ripe for settlement. Sony and Tencent also worked it out (December 18, 2025 games fray article), at least for now.
Patent litigation is not a profitable business for Nintendo. In a case over game controllers, they obtained a €7M ($8M) damages award after 15 years of suing and it’s not over yet (December 16, 2025 games fray article). But Nintendo’s last annual report stated a $40M loss from patent litigation (May 8, 2026 games fray article), probably attributable in no small part to Nintendo’s settlement of litigation that a licensing firm brought over former BlackBerry patents (December 2, 2025 ip fray article).
Why there isn’t much potential for damages
After readers asked questions, here’s a reminder of why Nintendo cannot seek a huge damages amount from Pocketpair.
In a November 8, 2024 article we already explained it as follows:
“The three patents-in-suit were filed and published a while after Palworld’s release, thereby limiting the damages period and capturing only some more recent Palworld sales.”
Palworld had huge commercial success immediately upon its January 2024 launch. But at the time, the patents in question had not been granted yet. Only after Palworld’s launch, Nintendo brought some divisional patent applications. They claimed back priority to the original patent application, which means that they are treated for validity purposes as if they had been filed in 2021, but that is separate from when there actually was a patent. We explained this last year (January 23, 2025 games fray article).
So, those patents were then granted in the further course of 2024, after Palworld’s overnight success, and it didn’t take long before Pocketpair had modified the game. From that point on, there was no room for damages either. So it’s only a short window, with a limited sales volume (and territorially limited to Japan), for which Nintendo can seek damages.
Nintendo might also get nothing if the patents are found valid and/or never to have been infringed. Pocketpair filed numerous invalidity challenges and non-infringement arguments. But even if we assume, for the same of the argument, that there was some infringement in 2024, it was a short period, the sales volume was limited, and Nintendo cannot recover damages on worldwide sales in Japan: a Japanese patent is valid only in Japan, like a U.S. patent is valid only in the United States.
This litigation is no longer aobut anything serious in commercial terms. It’s about a hypothetical injunction that doesn’t apply to current product versions and (if anything) a small damages award for a period during which Pocketpair generated limited new sales in Japan.