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The Japan Patent Office (JPO) refused a Nintendo and The Pokémon Company application focused on touchscreen creature-capture gameplay—but that is not a ruling in the Palworld lawsuit. The application is separate from the patents identified in that case, and the applicants appealed the refusal on September 3, 2026. The appeal was still pending in the latest report available.
Did Nintendo lose the Palworld lawsuit?
No. The JPO’s refusal concerns a patent application, not the infringement case against Palworld developer Pocketpair. It neither invalidates the patents at issue in the lawsuit nor determines whether Palworld infringes them, according to the European Commission’s European Innovation Council and SMEs Executive Agency (agency account).
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The proceedings address different questions: the JPO considered whether a particular invention could be granted a patent, while the Tokyo District Court case concerns Nintendo and The Pokémon Company’s allegations that Palworld infringes patent rights. The lawsuit’s claims have not been established by the JPO decision.
What patent application did the JPO refuse?
On July 7, 2026, the JPO refused joint Japanese application 2026-019762, which concerns touchscreen gameplay involving character movement, creature capture and combat commands. The agency’s account says the JPO had issued reasons for refusal in April, considered the applicants’ response and maintained objections under Article 29(2) of Japan’s Patent Act.
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This touchscreen-focused application is separate from the patents the agency says were considered by the Tokyo District Court. Pocketpair identified Japanese Patent Nos. 7545191, 7493117 and 7528390 as the patents involved in the lawsuit in its November 8, 2024 account (Pocketpair’s statement).
Why did the JPO refuse the application?
As summarized by the European Commission agency, the JPO found that several claimed elements lacked an inventive step in light of earlier publicly available material. That material included a 2013 YouTube video titled “Pokémon Generations – 3D Indie Pokémon Gameplay,” depicting an unofficial fan-made game, as well as information about touchscreen controls, mobile adaptations of computer games and creature capture during combat.
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The agency reports that the examiner considered adapting existing computer-game controls to touchscreens obvious, citing mobile adaptations such as ARK: Survival Evolved and PUBG. Objections remained against the main claims and several dependent claims, while the examiner found no reason to refuse certain other claims at that stage.
The agency also says the JPO rejected the applicants’ objection that the fan-game video should be excluded because its creation or publication allegedly infringed Pokémon-related copyright. In the agency’s summary, the JPO treated the video’s public availability as relevant prior-art information and considered its visible gameplay and narration enough to understand relevant behavior without access to source code. The underlying JPO decision was not available in the sources reviewed, so these points reflect the agency’s account of the decision.
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What did Nintendo and The Pokémon Company argue?
GameBusiness.jp reports that the applicants appealed the refusal on September 3, 2026, and argued that the examiner’s analysis was wrong (GameBusiness.jp report). They said video footage could not objectively establish the game’s underlying technical controls and that the examiner considered whether existing technologies could be combined without properly assessing whether there was a reason to combine them.
The applicants maintained that the invention was patentable and sought review or an opportunity to amend if the grounds for refusal remained, according to the same report. These are the applicants’ positions, not findings by the JPO. The appeal was pending in the latest report available.
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How does this fit into the Palworld lawsuit?
Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed their suit against Pocketpair in the Tokyo District Court on September 18, 2024. Nintendo’s announcement the next day said the plaintiffs sought an injunction and compensation for damages, alleging that Palworld infringed multiple patent rights (Nintendo announcement). Those remedies were requested by the plaintiffs, not awarded by a court.
Pocketpair’s November 8, 2024 account named Japanese Patent Nos. 7545191, 7493117 and 7528390 and said the requested damages included ¥5 million for each plaintiff, plus late-payment damages (Pocketpair’s account). That is the defendant’s description of the case and its requested relief, not a court finding.
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What happens next?
The JPO appeal and the infringement lawsuit remain separate proceedings. A decision to grant, amend or refuse application 2026-019762 would address that application; it would not, by itself, decide the court’s infringement claims. The latest report available said the appeal remained pending, and no final outcome of the lawsuit is established here.
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