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Palworld lawsuit nears end with Nintendo reportedly poised to gain almost nothing
(www.videogameschronicle.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2026
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Why would Nintendo get anything? They were suing based on mechanics they stole from other games to make Pokemon
Let's not completely forget they were suing based on patents that they filed after palworld was created for mechanics in palworld.
Which were just patents made based on extensions of previous patents and were dubious to begin with.
Which would be?
Using creatures to battle for you (Shin Megami Tensei), riding on creatures, etc.
The only one they mildly have a claim on is catching the creatures in magic balls, which is predated thousands of years by superstitious beliefs that you could trap evil spirits inside of crystals and other various rituals humans came up with.
Nope. The throw-ball-to-catch-creature, in the specific way it was defined by the patent, already existed in Craftopia (also made by Pocketpair) well before the patent
And even if SMT demons aren't the same as monsters, I recall DQ5 literally having captured monsters. That's '92.
Creature capturing, battling, and riding weren't directly under contention and are still in the game. The major features that got removed due to the lawsuit were being able to aim where you summon Pals (which Nintendo alleged violated a patent related to using a combination of a control stick and a button to summon a support character) and being able to see some Pals as gliders (which Nintendo alleged violated a patent related to automatically switching mounts or something). I'm sure there was a third patent I'm currently forgetting about, but whatever it was it doesn't seem to cover anything that's still in the game, because Nintendo amended their claim to only cover the time before the changes got made.
Nintendo would dearly love to be able to patent monster battling, etc. but all they've actually managed so far is to chip away at minor features.