Is Nintendo suing the Palworld devs over a patent on throwing Poké Balls?

Yesterday, Nintendo announced that it had finally turned its baleful gaze on Palworld, and would be pursuing legal action in the Tokyo District Court against developer Pocketpair over alleged patent infringement. But which patents? Nintendo's press release accuses Palworld of infringing on «multiple patent rights,» but Pocketpair says it doesn't know which patents it's supposed to have violated, and Nintendo hasn't elaborated. While we wait for more specifics on the lawsuit, I've been digging into patents held by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company to see where Mario's lawyers might be anchoring their case. After a crash course in patent research, I've got a strong suspicion that Nintendo's bringing Pocketpair to court over Poké Balls.

One point of clarification before we continue: It's definitely not about Palworld's monsters looking similar to Pokémon. If you caught wind of the many conversations about Palworld's arguable (or arguably blatant) imitation of Pokémon designs, you might assume that'd be the basis of Nintendo's lawsuit. That, however, would be a dispute over copyright, which protects original creative works of authorship, like books, music, and artistic designs. While Nintendo announced back in January that it intended to «investigate and take appropriate measures to address any acts that infringe on intellectual property rights related to the Pokémon,» an eventual copyright suit seemed unlikely, even for a company with such an infamously itchy legal trigger finger. Because the claims of copyright suits are so subjective, they're notoriously difficult to pull off; chances are, even Nintendo's nuclear-grade legal armory wouldn't guarantee success if it brought Pocketpair to court over knockoff Fauxkémon.

Instead, Nintendo says it's suing Pocketpair over patent infringement. Rather than protecting creative works, patents protect innovations, inventions, and processes. By filing a patent infringement lawsuit, Nintendo's not going after Pocketpair for