Palworld Vs Pokemon – What Precedent Is This Setting?

I am an avid Pokemon fan. No, I will not pretend to know every single thing about every iteration of the franchise: I watched many seasons of the anime, I played a lot of the games, I even collected some cards in my little purple days. If you’re reading this article, I could guess that you’re also a fan. However, even if you’re not, I will insist you keep reading. This case includes a blatant abuse of patent law, and potential ramifications that could stretch across the entirety of gaming.

In recent years, Nintendo and associated studios have been swept up in a vast lake of controversies, ranging from the shocking to the downright stupid. Controversies including (but not limited to): the price of Switch 2 consoles and new games, upgrade fees, the blacklisting of Kotaku, the threat of bricking consoles over mods and emulators, stricter policies for independent creators, a range of lawsuits, and more. For better or worse, most of these controversies have been flops, and Nintendo hasn’t seen a huge impact in revenue or player/community engagement. This is in part because of a growing sense of controversy fatigue, and not only are so many Nintendo controversies shaky to begin with, but they’re largely rooted in the West, and foreign studios are harder to impact one way or the other. Other reasons are easy to figure out: Nintendo franchises have a heavy nostalgic draw, they have some of the most popular and exclusive fandoms in gaming history, and most gamers simply prefer Nintendo consoles and those accompanying games to the alternatives of Xbox or PS5, which have their own long string of issues in 2025.

However, has this recent stunt with the Pokemon-Palworld lawsuit crossed a line?

For those who don’t know, Palworld is a monster-taming RPG that was released in 2024. Many top gaming journalists took kindly to the game’s structure, and the way you work with the creatures or “pals” in the game. However, it didn’t take long for accusations to start flying, and the most prominent was the potential use of AI in creature and game designs. Then, as always seems to follow AI accusations, came the claims of plagiarism.

It was clear from the beginning that Palworld was heavily inspired by Pokemon, and many pals resembled classic members of the Pokedex. Now, obviously, not every instance of one studio’s product resembling another’s is plagiarism, especially when you’re looking within a single genre. Likewise, common monsters and mobs are bound to share similarities as they appear across different games.

However, it’s hard to deny that Pokemon has a distinct artistic style, and its creatures have very unique designs. It’s not uncommon that you can look at a drawing of a creature and deduce, “that must be a pokemon,” even if you don’t play the game

[Image public domain]

It’s for that reason, not some universal similarities, that Palworld was put on the radar. Several pals began to appear with shocking similarities to pokemon, from their patterning to their anatomy. Some practically resembled re-colored versions of existing pokemon, to sone players.

[Images taken from IGN, “Palworld vs. Pokémon Comparison: Just How Similar Are the Designs?” by Joshua Yehl, Jan 26 2024]

Now, is it enough to warrant a lawsuit, much less a victory? Well, look through the comparisons, and you can decide your own opinion on that. Maybe you think there’s a resemblance, but not enough to warrant punitive measures. Maybe you think this is a total ripoff, and the Pokemon company is absolutely warranted in taking action. Either way, is it possible that the company took their action too far?

Yes. That question was rhetorical: they absolutely are.

To aid in their lawsuit, Nintendo and the Pokemon company filed for a series of patents. Patents in the context of gaming, in short, are legal protections over specific mechanics, designs, and other aspects of a game or franchise, to prevent plagiarism and “ripoffs” of unique elements. At first, all but one were rejected, that one being the mechanic of aiming and capturing characters: in other words, pokeballs [source 2].

However, in this month of September 2025, Nintendo and Pokemon have finally scored some patent victories through the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office). This may be good for their case and their company, and it is only two new patents that got put through. However, given what those patents are, this casts a very dim shadow over game creation abroad.

The first patent awarded, Patent No. 12,409,387, gives Nintendo and the Pokemon company ownership of the “smooth switching of riding objects” mechanism [source 1]. Think of, for example, Pokemon Arceus, where you use the celestial flute to seamlessly summon and ride mounts like Wyrdeer and Ursaluna, as well as the button that allows you to swap between those mounts. For those of you more into classical titles, this could in theory apply to your bike, or when you ride a pokemon on certain terrains, to get to new regions of the map. I don’t know about you, but that’s a mechanic far from unique to pokemon. Instant mount summons can be found in titles like World Of Warcraft, Skyrim, Final Fantasy, The Legend Of Zelda, Destiny 2, and more. You could, in theory, stretch what “smooth switching” entails, so it applies to mounts in Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed, Ghost Of Tsushima, even Freddy from Five Nights At Freddy’s: Security Breach. I actually remember picking up Pokemon Arceus, and despite there being some conversation about Pokemon mounts before, the specific summoning mechanic and handling of Wyrdeer did not strike me as a “whole new experience,” but a direct inspiration of Elden Ring’s own seamless-summon steed, Torrent (in fairness, I should mention that Arceus technically came out before Elden Ring, though only by a couple of weeks). There’s nothing wrong with drawing inspiration either, but to say this mechanic is so unique that it deserves a patent is obviously, from these examples, worth contesting.

The second patent that got through was a lot more egregious. Patent No. 12,403,397 awards Nintendo and the Pokemon company ownership of the mechanic of “summoning a character and letting it fight another”.

You read that right.

Granted, when you think of this mechanic, Pokemon is among the first games that comes to mind, and definitely one of the core titles that popularized this mechanic. However, not only was Pokemon not the one to start it, but it’s far from unique to this franchise. The summon mechanic is a staple in countless RPGs, dating back to the days of the Sega Dreamcast and SNES. It appears in a lot of the games I just mentioned. You can summon daedra and atronachs in many Elder Scrolls games, there are summoning spells in WOW, there are all sorts of summonable NPCS in the Souls series (as well as Elden Ring’s spirit ashes), and most significantly of all there, summoning has been a core element in several versions of Final Fantasy, whether it’s catching mobs like the famous Cactuar, collecting aeons, or summoning espers in tactics. Other games and franchises that use this mechanic include (and are far from limited to): Persona, Kingdom Hearts, Diablo, Terraria, Dragon Age, Ni no Kuni, Shining Force, Fire Emblem, Hearthstone, Yu-Gi-Oh!, Octopath Traveler, Baldur’s Gate, Valheim, Warhammer 40k, Cult Of The Lamb, League Of Legends, and more.

Now, I’m not a lawyer. However, I think it’s pretty clear why Nintendo and Pokemon claiming ownership of these mechanics could be turned into a threat toward existing or upcoming titles. I also feel like this could set a dangerous precedent. Imagine if Nintendo decides to weaponize the Mario Bros or Legend Of Zelda companies to claim ownership of, I don’t know, the mechanic of power-ups or carrying around empty bottles. Imagine if, in a retaliatory measure, Xbox teams up with Bungie or Bethesda to claim ownership of power armor and regenerative forcefield/health. Sure, it’s not a mechanic unique to the Fallout or Halo franchise, or even started by them, but they have money and some level of plot armor, and apparently the USPTO is not invested enough in the videogame scene to bother looking too deep into it.

Some of what comes up in these patent files, by the way, was not even limited to gaming-specific mechanics. Florian Mueller, the patent and gaming litigation expert working with GamesFray, discussed his own issues with this patent lawfare on a podcast. He pointed out that the patent’s language is almost intentionally vague and overreaching. Quote, ““Storage medium, information processing system, information processing apparatus, and game processing method” could describe virtually anything, from AI systems to self-driving car controllers, or even word processors” [source 4]. That is how petty and insane this has gotten.

(Image taken from patent file, pictured in ““The Patent Office Made A Huge Mistake” – How Nintendo’s Problematic ‘Summoning’ Patent Passes Without Scrutiny” by Jennifer Young, Sep 12 2025)

It only seems more obvious that Nintendo and Pokemon are growing desperate to either eliminate Palworld from the gaming scene, or to exploit its questionable design choices (and whatever lawfare is necessary) to reap the maximum profit for them and maximum penalty for the competition.

Now, I want to make this clear: plagiarism is a serious issue and should be taken as such, and as members of a creative writing website, I am sure many of you would agree. Just imagine, as a published novelist, the frustration of finding a brand-new novel on the market and reading some parts that aren’t just similar, but a near word-for-word, copy-paste reflection of your own. No credit is given, no profits are given, and nothing is public domain. That would be frustrating, and negotiations for how to handle it would be appropriate. If the Pokemon company made a reasonable case about plagiarism alone, I doubt we would even be talking about this case. However, going back to that book analogy, I think we can also agree that responding with the wrath of a literary god, to claim sole ownership of a common concept in storytelling, so now nobody can use something like the “double-twist villain” plot device but you, would be way more catastrophic than a case of individual plagiarism. If this becomes the new standard, even if it’s limited to Nintendo alone, it could implicate several game studios and creators, and ultimately become another way to attack developers, whether they’re bigger competition or just smaller developers.

I also want to address that this isn’t a call for anyone to do anything like boycott Pokemon or Palworld. If you feel strongly enough to make that choice for yourself, respect to you. However, I am a realist before an idealist, and not only does Nintendo have some notoriously thick plot armor, but Pokemon is such a massive franchise that inciting something like a boycott, one big enough to actually put a dent in their wallet, would take a lot. It can happen, we’ve seen results before from angry gamers. That said, this is a whole new beast in comparison. At the very least, we can spread some awareness, and be vocal about the risk behind these unethical patents. Not to mention, laugh at the pettiness of it all.

To leave you on a bit of a whitepill, too, a patent like this can not only be contested, but would be so hard and impractical to enforce, this might just be a case of all talk from Nintendo/Pokemon. We’ll have to wait to see how serious they get about enforcing this, but I’m telling you, it’s a task almost more massive than a realistic Pokemon boycott, so I have doubts that this will amount to much more than a bunch of wasted time and money in American and Japanese courts.

Of course, that is just my opinion and my breakdown of the situation. Let me know what you think, and if either party here is justified.

Source list:

Source 1: https://gamesfray.com/last-week-nintendo-and-the-pokemon-company-received-a-u-s-patent-on-summoning-a-character-and-letting-it-fight-another/

Source2: https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/nintendo-applying-for-anti-palworld-patents-in-the-us-they-are-fighting

Source 3: https://www.ign.com/articles/palworld-vs-pokmon-comparison-just-how-similar-are-the-designs

Source 4: https://www.windowscentral.com/gaming/the-patent-office-made-a-huge-mistake-why-nintendos-summoning-patent-passed-without-scrutiny