Earlier this week, Nintendo and The Pokémon Company, which it co-owns, announced they were suing producer survival crafting MMO that exploded onto Steam and Xbox earlier this yr. The firms have accused Pocketpair, the studio behind the overnight “gun-toting” sensation, of patent infringement. While neither side has revealed exactly what elements they’re accused of copying, experts have begun to invest on the mechanics that might be at the guts of the dispute.

“In this lawsuit, we seek an injunction against infringement and compensatory damages on the grounds that the game developed and published by the defendant infringes multiple patent rights,” Nintendo claims. announced on September 18. Pocketpair responded the following day. “At this time, we are not aware of the specific patents we are accused of infringing, and have not been notified of such details,” it said. “It is truly unfortunate that we will be forced to devote a significant amount of time to matters unrelated to game development due to this lawsuit.”

This it could take weeks before Nintendo lays out the precise patent infringement allegations in further filings, but within the meantime, latest reports and evaluation have begun to shed some light on what the corporate’s primary line of legal attack may be, and why it selected Pocketpair in the primary place. While the early online controversy over the similarity to the creature designs involved the sport’s designs, the lawsuit Nintendo filed eight months later is about what players actually do in the sport.

One such thing is throwing a spherical object at fantasy creatures to catch them and store them inside. Nintendo has a patent on a version of this mechanic, as recently reported . Going into detail, precise language was extracted What exactly is that this patent about, which was filed in 2021 and approved just last yr:

As you’ll be able to see, it’s not nearly throwing one thing at one other to catch it, but a particular sequence of events based on specific inputs. We still don’t know if that is certainly one of the actual patents covered by Nintendo’s lawsuit, or what the court will determine whether it is. (The case was filed in Japan.) But whether it is, the timing might be narrowly favorable to the Mario creator. Why was the patent so recent when Pokémon has been around for many years? Probably since it wasn’t until 2022 that a game actually featured players catching Pokémon with Poké Balls in 3D spaces like this one.

Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara recently said based on translation bythat Nintendo and The Pokémon Company filed further “split” patents based on the above earlier this yr and asked for expedited review, with approval for one coming just last month. Kurihara suggested that this will likely have been a part of a method to zip up the patent language before taking legal motion against Pocketpair for infringement.

This isn’t the primary time Nintendo has gone after a Japanese video game company for patent infringement. Return in 2017sued mobile studio Colopl over its Japanese smartphone game, accusing it of infringing a patent related to “special technology used to operate a joystick above a touchpad.” Both sides eventually we reached an agreementwith Colopl paying Nintendo around $20 million. Industry analyst Serkan Toto, who heads the consulting firm Kantan Games, pointed to this instance in This week’s interview with .

“First, this lawsuit was filed under Japanese law, so it has nothing to do with the United States, or with UK or EU law,” he said. “Second, I think Nintendo took the time to build a case, plan everything, including the counterarguments the other side could present in the lawsuit, how to counter them and make sure they think they will win before they file the lawsuit.”

Toto painted a fairly bleak picture of Pocketpair’s likely probabilities of winning against Nintendo, given its history, and suggested that the timing of the lawsuit could also be related to the Tokyo Game Show. Pocketpair was expected to announce a PlayStation 5 version several months after partnering with Sony in a three way partnership to expand and market the IP. Sony has thus far declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“You can bet your life that Nintendo hates this company and they couldn’t find a way to work around the character designs,” Toto said. “That’s why they’re not listed in their press release. So they come with these technical oddities.” He added that he believes the goal is to harm Pocketpair financially. It’s unclear exactly how much the sport has earned thus far, however it has already 19 million players shortly after the premiere, including through Game Pass as a part of an agreement with Microsoft.

It stays to be seen what ultimately comes out when Nintendo goes public with its case against Pocketpair. In the meantime, the corporate is keeping its cards near its vest. “We filed this lawsuit at this time after thoroughly reviewing the content that is the subject of this lawsuit,” the statement said. “We will refrain from commenting on topics related to the content of the lawsuit.”