Last week, Nintendo released a statement announcing a patent lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. Given Nintendo's infamous reputation for applying overwhelming legal pressure, the announcement led plenty of us to wonder when in the eight months since Palworld's release Nintendo might've started setting its litigation gears in motion. According to patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon, Nintendo might've been planning its patent lawsuit before Palworld even launched.
While Nintendo hasn't publicized which patents it's accusing Pocketpair of infringing, the generally-held assumption is that Nintendo's basing its lawsuit around patents it filed on creature-capturing and riding mechanics during the development of 2022 Switch game Pokemon Legends: Arceus. During an interview with PC Gamer covering the Palworld lawsuit, I asked Sigmon to explain the amendments, continuations, and divisional applications that those patents had received, according to US and Japanese patent databases.
