Palworld dev says a Dark Souls 3 mod invalidates Nintendo’s Pokeball patent, Nintendo says mods don’t count as real games, and an expert worries prior art precedents could see a modder’s work “used against them”
By Dustin Bailey
Copyright gamesradar
Skip to main content
GamesRadar+
The Games, Movies, TV & Comics You Love
View Profile
Search GamesRadar+
Game Insights
Games Features
Games Reviews
Games Guides
The Big Preview
On The Radar
Future Games Show
Action Games
Action RPGs
Adventure Games
Third Person Shooters
Xbox Series X
Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch 2
Tabletop Gaming
Grand Theft Auto
Assassin’s Creed
Monster Hunter
The Elder Scrolls
Entertainment
Anime Shows
Sci-Fi Shows
Superhero Shows
Animated Shows
Marvel TV Shows
Star Wars TV Shows
DC TV Shows
Movie Reviews
Superhero Movies
Action Movies
Sci-Fi Movies
Anime Movies
Horror Movies
Marvel Movies
Apple TV Plus
Disney Plus
Amazon Prime Video
Marvel Comics
Toys & Merch
Toys & Collectibles
Dungeons and Dragons
Hardware News
Hardware Reviews
Hardware Features
Desktop PCs
Peripherals
Headsets & Headphones
TVs & Monitors
Gaming Mice
Gaming Keyboards
Gaming Chairs
Speakers & Audio
Accessories & Tech
Gaming Controllers
SSDs & Hard Drives
Accessories
Buying Guides
Newsletters
Retro Gamer
Game Insights
Games Features
Games Reviews
Games Guides
The Big Preview
On The Radar
Future Games Show
Action Games
Action RPGs
Adventure Games
Third Person Shooters
View Platforms
Xbox Series X
Nintendo Switch
Nintendo Switch 2
Tabletop Gaming
Franchises
Grand Theft Auto
Assassin’s Creed
Monster Hunter
The Elder Scrolls
Entertainment
View Entertainment
View TV Shows
Anime Shows
Sci-Fi Shows
Superhero Shows
Animated Shows
Marvel TV Shows
Star Wars TV Shows
DC TV Shows
View Movies
Movie Reviews
Superhero Movies
Action Movies
Sci-Fi Movies
Anime Movies
Horror Movies
Marvel Movies
View Streaming
Apple TV Plus
Disney Plus
Amazon Prime Video
View Comics
Marvel Comics
Toys & Merch
Toys & Collectibles
Dungeons and Dragons
View Hardware
Hardware News
Hardware Reviews
Hardware Features
Desktop PCs
Peripherals
View Peripherals
Headsets & Headphones
TVs & Monitors
Gaming Mice
Gaming Keyboards
Gaming Chairs
Speakers & Audio
Accessories & Tech
Gaming Controllers
SSDs & Hard Drives
Accessories
Buying Guides
Newsletters
Retro Gamer
Gaming Magazines
Why subscribe?
Subscribe from just £3
Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love
Try a single issue or save on a subscription
Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From£9.99Subscribe now
Dying Light: The Beast
Borderlands 4 review
Battlefield 6
New Games for 2025
Don’t miss these
Survival Games
As the Palworld lawsuit rumbles on, Nintendo claims two new patents that could change the way non-Pokemon creature collectors work for good
Survival Games
As Palworld update soars, IP expert says “weird” new moves from Nintendo in ongoing lawsuit read like a “desperate attempt to win by doing something odd”
Baldur’s Gate
Baldur’s Gate 3 publishing lead says patents like the controversial ones Nintendo has secured amid its Palworld lawsuit “are too often used in bad faith”
Even Pokemon’s former chief legal officer thinks Nintendo’s controversial new patent is unenforceable: “I wish Nintendo and Pokemon good luck”
Survival Games
With the Palworld lawsuit rumbling on in the background, the Nintendo Switch welcomes “Palland” – a survival game that looks a whole lot like Pocketpair’s creature collector
Nintendo has more than Palworld to deal with – IP expert says Genshin Impact dev’s new Pokemon-style game “clearly infringes” on a hard-to-avoid patent Pocketpair is accused of infringing
Survival Games
Palworld 1.0 release scheduled for “next year” with “a truly massive amount of content planned” despite Nintendo’s ongoing lawsuit – and Pocketpair is “also working on some other things”
Survival Games
Palworld might be making another play for Pokemon’s crown, snapping up shares in a Japanese card game publisher while Nintendo’s lawsuit rumbles on in the background
Switch modder landed with a $2 million fee after settling lawsuit with Nintendo over selling modded consoles and piracy-enabling flash carts
Super Smash Bros
A Super Smash Bros. Melee modder has finally added the most powerful Nintendo character of all: a cease and desist notice
Survival Games
10 days after Sony sued over Tencent’s allegedly “slavish” Horizon Zero Dawn clone, its Steam page has been scrubbed of robot mastodons and Aloy lookalikes
Nintendo reaches settlement with accessory manufacturer behind viral pre-reveal Switch 2 mock-up in a “confidential” agreement
The Legend of Zelda
27 years later, this uncanny “Hero of Law” mod makes The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time the game it was always meant to be: Ace Attorney
The games industry might be built on borrowed ideas, but new ones have to come from somewhere – even if Fumito Ueda says “the era of game mechanics is over”
Final Fantasy
Final Fantasy 14’s Yoshi-P breaks silence following latest add-on drama, says Square Enix has no choice but to act if mods threaten the MMO itself as costs rise and regulations grow stricter
Survival Games
Palworld dev says a Dark Souls 3 mod invalidates Nintendo’s Pokeball patent, Nintendo says mods don’t count as real games, and an expert worries prior art precedents could see a modder’s work “used against them”
Dustin Bailey
17 September 2025
“Modders would become ‘fair game’ as their ideas could be patented by someone else”
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Pocket Pair)
Nintendo’s lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair is still ongoing and unlikely to be resolved anytime soon, but a new look at the case files suggests a pretty striking stance from the Nintendo legal team: in essence, they’re arguing that mods don’t count as real games.
In 2021, shortly before the release of Pokemon Legends: Arceus, Nintendo filed a patent on Pokemon-style creature collecting mechanics. In 2024, after Palworld launched to wild success, the company registered a series of divisional patents under the previous patent’s umbrella, describing more particular parts of the Pokeball mechanic.
The divisional patents are at the heart of Nintendo’s lawsuit against Pocketpair. The Palworld developer pushed back with a number of examples of similar mechanics in games ranging from Final Fantasy 14 to Monster Hunter from well before Nintendo’s patents were issued. These examples, Pocketpair hoped, would constitute prior art and diminish Nintendo’s patent claims.
You may like
As the Palworld lawsuit rumbles on, Nintendo claims two new patents that could change the way non-Pokemon creature collectors work for good
As Palworld update soars, IP expert says “weird” new moves from Nintendo in ongoing lawsuit read like a “desperate attempt to win by doing something odd”
Baldur’s Gate 3 publishing lead says patents like the controversial ones Nintendo has secured amid its Palworld lawsuit “are too often used in bad faith”
One such example that Pocketpair highlighted was a Dark Souls 3 mod called Pocket Souls, and that’s the crux of a new bit of legal analysis from Florian Mueller at games fray. Nintendo says that mods can’t count as prior art because they can’t stand on their own. Mueller suggests that’s an “extreme” position for the company to take, and “courts usually reject attempts to narrow the pool for prior art references in unreasonable ways.”
It’ll ultimately be up to the court to decide whether Nintendo’s argument is valid, but if the company gets its way, that could set a dangerous precedent for the modding community.
“We are concerned about what an adoption of Nintendo’s views by the Tokyo District Court and potentially other courts in the world would mean for the modder community,” Mueller writes. “Apart from utter disregard for the enormous creativity with which modders contribute to game-related innovation, modders would become ‘fair game’ as their ideas could be patented by someone else (unless they file for patents first, which modders typically don’t) and then, depending on the specific prior use rules in a jurisdiction, be used against them.”
Of course, Nintendo’s lawyers probably wouldn’t look at any collateral damage against mods as a particularly worrying outcome. The company’s already taken direct action against Nintendo-themed add-ons for Garry’s Mod, the Zelda: Breath of the Wild multiplayer mod, and more, which has had Palworld modders feeling especially sketchy about Pokemon-themed mods. We’ll have to wait and see what the courts have to say about this particular argument, though.
Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.
There are plenty more games like Pokemon out there, and Nintendo hasn’t sued most of them… yet.
See more PS5 News
Xbox Series X
PlayStation
Dustin Bailey
Social Links Navigation
Staff Writer
Dustin Bailey joined the GamesRadar team as a Staff Writer in May 2022, and is currently based in Missouri. He’s been covering games (with occasional dalliances in the worlds of anime and pro wrestling) since 2015, first as a freelancer, then as a news writer at PCGamesN for nearly five years. His love for games was sparked somewhere between Metal Gear Solid 2 and Knights of the Old Republic, and these days you can usually find him splitting his entertainment time between retro gaming, the latest big action-adventure title, or a long haul in American Truck Simulator.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
As the Palworld lawsuit rumbles on, Nintendo claims two new patents that could change the way non-Pokemon creature collectors work for good
As Palworld update soars, IP expert says “weird” new moves from Nintendo in ongoing lawsuit read like a “desperate attempt to win by doing something odd”
Baldur’s Gate 3 publishing lead says patents like the controversial ones Nintendo has secured amid its Palworld lawsuit “are too often used in bad faith”
Even Pokemon’s former chief legal officer thinks Nintendo’s controversial new patent is unenforceable: “I wish Nintendo and Pokemon good luck”
With the Palworld lawsuit rumbling on in the background, the Nintendo Switch welcomes “Palland” – a survival game that looks a whole lot like Pocketpair’s creature collector
Nintendo has more than Palworld to deal with – IP expert says Genshin Impact dev’s new Pokemon-style game “clearly infringes” on a hard-to-avoid patent Pocketpair is accused of infringing
Latest in Survival Games
After 14 years and nearly $500,000 raised for charity, one dedicated Minecraft player is finally set to reach the fabled end-of-world Far Lands – a feat that may just be “one of the single greatest achievements” in gaming
Palworld 1.0 release scheduled for “next year” with “a truly massive amount of content planned” despite Nintendo’s ongoing lawsuit – and Pocketpair is “also working on some other things”
No Man’s Sky’s latest update “stretched our engine limits” on the 9-year-old game, but Hello Games dev says it’s “satisfying to see the fruits of that labour”
Dune: Awakening devs apologize for “created expectations” surrounding new Lost Harvest DLC after Chapter 2 update, promise “to rectify” things with more content this fall
Palworld publishing director teases something “you might just like” is coming soon, but for now “Palworld posting” is on pause until they beat Silksong
Less than a day after the Dune: Awakening Chapter 2 launch, Funcom rolls out a quick hotfix addressing “the mother of all bugs” that saw Deep Desert loot respawning “every 0.5 seconds”
Latest in News
Palworld dev says a Dark Souls 3 mod invalidates Nintendo’s Pokeball patent, Nintendo says mods don’t count as real games, and an expert worries prior art precedents could see a modder’s work “used against them”
Right after Silksong, a day before Borderlands 4, and just ahead of Hades 2, a new dev’s co-op roguelike threaded the needle to become a top 10 seller on Steam with 100k copies sold in a day
Deadpool and Wolverine director’s Star Wars movie Starfighter shares new look at Ryan Gosling “somewhere in the Mediterranean sea” as filming is underway
Paradox gives up on dressing the wound, confirms Bloodlines 2 will have Lasombra and Toreador clans in the base game after “frank feedback” – then reveals more expansion pass DLC
Weapons director’s Resident Evil movie adds Fantastic Four’s Mole Man actor to cast
Elder Scrolls MMO lead still wants to make a new game, despite the cancelation of the Blackbird project that Xbox’s Phil Spencer apparently loved: “I don’t think you can ride one thing into forever”
GAME REVIEWS
MOVIE REVIEWS
Lego Voyagers review: “A carefully crafted, playful, and earnest adventure”
There’s now a real version of the Witcher Gwent card game, and it’s just as engrossing as the original
Borderlands 4 review: “Undeniably an excellent looter shooter, but one that requires a bit of tunnel vision to fully enjoy”
This enormous exploration board game won’t be for everyone, but it’s a masterclass in narrative and sandbox gameplay
Hollow Knight Silksong review: “Worth the wait and then some, this isn’t just more Hollow Knight but an evolved, spindly beast all its own – even if it’s fiddly at times”
One Battle After Another review: “One of the best studio movies in years and an instant classic”
The Conjuring: Last Rites review: “Not bold or memorable enough for the Warrens’ final chapter”
Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle review: “Roars past Mugen Train as Demon Slayer’s best adventure yet”
The Long Walk review: “One of the best Stephen King adaptations ever made”
Frankenstein review: “A classy, if somewhat safe, adaptation”
Gen V season 2 review: “As strong as the first season, if not stronger”
Wednesday season 2 part 2 review: “Ortega shines, but it’s a zombie who steals the entire show”
Peacemaker season 2 review: “Darker and sadder than the first year, but there’s still a lot of fun to be had with the 11th Street Kids.”
Wednesday season 2 part 1 review: “Complex and exciting but weighed down by too many subplots”
Alien: Earth review: “Arguably the franchise’s strongest outing since James Cameron’s Aliens”
GamesRadar+ is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
Contact Future’s experts
Terms and conditions
Privacy policy
Cookies policy
Advertise with us
Review guidelines
Write for us
Accessibility Statement
Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury,
BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.
Please login or signup to comment
Please wait…
