Nintendo Has So Many Patents It ‘Could Sue Half the Video Game Industry,’ Analyst Says

Speaking about the legal dispute over Pocket Pair’s alleged infringed Pokémon patents with Palworld, Serkan Toto, a Japanese market analyst and CEO of Kantan Games, said that Nintendo and its lawyers can do as they please, since the company has registered so many patents which could very well sue half the video game industry.

In speaking about the Palworld case, Toto took as an example the lawsuit filed by Nintendo in 2017 against the Japanese software house Colopl always regarding infringed patents, winning about 21 million dollars, more than the licensing fees that the Kyoto company is collecting today.

Nintendo has a patent for almost everything

“It took us four years to get to the end of the lawsuit with Colopl and eventually there was a settlement between the parties, but Nintendo basically won and sued them for six patents,” Toto tells GamesRadar+.

At this time, we do not know exactly which specific patents are included in the lawsuit launched by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company against Pocketpair, the creators of Palworld. A Japanese lawyer has suggested that one of them could be related to the mechanics of capturing Pokémon with Pokéballs. However, according to Serkan Toto, the Kyoto company probably has an embarrassment of riches to choose from, given that over the years has registered thousands and thousands of patents of all kindsso much so that he could sue virtually anyone, at any time, if he wanted.

“For example, they have a patent where when you have an isometric view and a character is covered by a tree, the character controlled by a player can be seen as a shadow. That’s in every single game with this type of view. In 2017, they had the desire to spit in Colopl’s bowl and came up with these patents,” said Toto, who later added that thanks to its vast repertoire of registered patents, Nintendo “could have had the opportunity in 2017 to even sue half the video game industry. They have thousands and thousands of patents on other things. And they can decide when to sue and when not to sue.”