Nintendo since the 80s has been a household name. From arcade machines, to home entertainment systems, to portable games consoles. They even had mass success with a gaming machine that had an exercise component to it would you have believed it? Nintendo’s success has been meteoric, but could not be achieved without their loveable characters. From their main front man, a plumber called Mario, to the hero Link from the Legend of Zelda, or the cute and cuddly Pikachu.
Toyo Keizai, a Tokyo-based book/magazine publisher that specialises in business, politics and economics, wrote on the 5th of February, 2024 of the top richest companies ranked in Japan with Nintendo leading at 1,718.6 billion yen just ahead of Shin-Etsu Chemical Industry’s 1,570.8 billion yen. And as of writing, Nintendo sits at number 21 in all of Japan with Nintendo being the 343rd most valuable company in the world according to their data at companiesmarketcap.com. In case you were wondering as a side tidbit, Japan currently sees Toyota at the top with a market cap of 274.18 billion. Top of the world, sees NVIDIA, with a market cap of 4.260 trillion.
Nintendo’s marketing of their designs has helped them sell 883.77 million units of hardware sales, and 6095.74 million units of software sales which add up to about 6.98 billion units sold! As sourced from Nintendo’s Dedicated Video Game Sales Units as of December 31, 2025.
And that’s just for their video game-based sales – including the Success of Pokémon – amongst other forms of commercialism in their revenue portfolio like merchandise, films like the wildly successful Super Mario Bros movie released on the 5th of April 2023 and grossed over $1.36 billion worldwide, and they even have theme parks.
Though as we’re soon to address, Nintendo embarks upon an alternative form of wealth advancement as they have historically garnered themselves a different reputation aside from being creators of entertainment, or at least, virtual entertainment. One that is more, protectively litigious in nature but still quite the spectacle nonetheless as we will examine some of their recent legal escapades, and see how far they’ll go to protect their intellectual property.
Public Legal Disputes
Nintendo have a spree of courtroom victories and we’re starting off with somewhat of a copy-and-paste easy win that features not only characters from the original series, but also features inspirations from Western entertainment.
A lawsuit, filed in December 2021 against several Chinese companies accused of intellectual property theft and copyright infringement for the mobile game Pocket Monster Reissue which had won them the sum of $15 million. This is against the game’s approximately $42 million in its opening year as reported by the South China Morning Post. Against the game’s productions costs, it could be companies may be willing to ‘take the red card’ for the sake of millions of pounds in profits.
This kind of ‘sue-baiting’ can be seen in an up-and-coming title: ‘Pickmon’ as we enter a land of lost civilisations, and the wondrous creatures of Pickmon. The latest contender in the creature capture genre bearing some striking similarities. With Link Lookalike of Zelda – Breath of the Wild and carrying similarities not just of Pokémon, and also Palworld of which we’ll review later. But it isn’t balls the monsters are caught in, it’s cards. ‘Specialised cards’ to be exact, used to tame various Pickmon and ‘turn them into your most trusted allies!’ Along with building industrial empires, and farming. From their X post they describe themselves as ‘#PickMon is a completely new multiplayer, open-world survival crafting monster-collecting game!’ Though as of yet, there really isn’t much released about the game. From their YouTube channel currently at 291 subscribers after the launch of their trailer though a large portion of their views are from a trailer uploaded to IGN at 85K in 12 days. As of the 6th of March 2026, they liked and replied to some comments. One commenter noted “Incredible, there isn’t a single creative idea in this. It feels like chat GPT spat it out wholesale.” To which they replied, “Actually, no. We spent 10 years developing this game ourselves.” Other commenters noted they ‘respect the audacity’ and another wrote that this project was a ‘summoning ritual of Nintendo lawyers’. Their planned release date on Steam along with future releases planned for PlayStation and Nintendo Switch are still to be announced. Pickmon on Steam.
As for conflicts past, Nintendo’s legal conquest expands into the realm of ROMs (read-only memory) that copy their game, in the form of a DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) takedown. It’s a formal notice sent by a copyright owner or their representative to an online service provider requesting the removal of content due to infringement. And one such recipient is the ROM site ‘ROM Universe’.
In Nintendo of America Inc. v. Matthew Storman (2:19-cv-07818) “Defendant Matthew Storman and persons of unknown identity (“Defendants”) own and operate the website www.romuniverse.com (the “Website”) built largely on brazen and mass scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights.” According to the Website, as of the date of filing this Complaint, hundreds of thousands of copies of Nintendo games have been illegally downloaded through the Website including nearly 300,000 downloads of copies of pirated Nintendo Switch games and more than 500,000 copies of pirated Nintendo 3DS games.” The courts concluded, DATED: May 26, 2021. “IV. CONCLUSION Accordingly, the Court: (1) GRANTS Plaintiff’s Motion for Summary Judgment as to Plaintiff’s copyright infringement, unfair competition and Lanham Act claims, and awards Plaintiff $1,715,000 in statutory damages under the Copyright Act and $400,000 in statutory damages under the Lanham Act for a total of $2,115,000 in statutory damages; ”
But Nintendo’s rampage doesn’t stop there. Modding sites have also been dealt some additional burn damage. According to both Nintendo Life and Nintendo Reporters, Nintendo have issued multiple DMCA takedowns targeting mods hosted on GameBanana. A site member by the name of Waikuterua reported over 60 DMCA takedowns, with 40 directed at their own mods.
Why stop at the distributors? Why not go for the very engine, the very platform that enables these dastardly thieves? Well Nintendo did just that.
According to the official court document, Yuzu agreed to pay Nintendo $2.4 million as the court document writes: “Plaintiff Nintendo of America Inc. (“Plaintiff” or “Nintendo”) and Tropic Haze LLC (“Defendant” or “Tropic Haze”), by and through their undersigned counsel, hereby consent to judgment in favor of Nintendo, and jointly move the Court to enter monetary relief in the sum of US$2,400,000.00 in favor of Nintendo and against Defendant.”
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For context, according to Statista with a survey time of May 2023 to June 2025: “Released on May 12, 2023, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is the highly anticipated follow-up to the 2017 critical hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. An exclusive release for Nintendo’s Switch console, the action-adventure game sold 10 million units worldwide in its first 3 days, 2.24 million of which were sold in the game’s domestic market Japan. Total lifetime sales of Zelda: TotK stood at 21.93 million as of June 2025.” How much do those games sell for? In the UK, around £60? What is it they say? Too much money isn’t enough money? I wonder how much of their programmers at Nintendo that actually made the game that sold so much saw of those profits that were stolen damaging poor Nintendo from the big bad emulator company? Well that company is no more, as announced on their Discord ‘Yuzu and Yuzu’s support of Citra are being discontinued, effectively immediately’.
The shockwaves – as if radiation – of Nintendo’s slamming iron fist have sent shuddering fear through those that would dare dread on Mushroom Kingdom territory. So much so that sometimes projects are put on hold or entirely scrapped because of this. This was true for not a ROM platform, but a stand-alone game itself, that does feature some familiar Pokémon but mostly has its own designs, or fakemon, as they’re called.
Pokémon Uranium by JV and InvoluntaryTwitch that took 9 years to create, set in the new Tandor region launched on Windows PC on August 6th 2016 showcasing 150 new Pokémon, which were original Pokémon mutated due to radiation exposure. However, after a very successful launch and a large amount of downloads, shortly after release on August 15th 2016, in a statement on their website, they thanked the fans, and then had declared their game will no longer be accessible from their website due to you-know-who serving the you-know-what.
However, it was later revived by the community between September 21, 2016 and October 29, 2018, and had its most recent update, about 2021.
Palworld: Success & Lawsuit
Palworld was released in early access on Jan 19 2024, and, even up until early 2026, isn’t officially fully released and in its first week sold millions. As of Jan 21 2024, @Palworld_EN wrote that on Steam alone they had exceeded 1 million breaking records that left the developers stumped.
Then shortly over a year later noting – the date at Feb 18 2025 – wrote again that they at that point had 32 million players.
This has caught the attention of Nintendo and on September 18, 2024, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against Palworld.
The claim is that Palworld is an infringement against patents Nintendo Co., Ltd and The Pokémon Company have. The 3 patents in question are Patent 7528390, Patent 7493117, Patent 7545191 that were made after Palworld’s release, but are derived from earlier patents.
Report on Patent Infringement Lawsuit | 株式会社ポケットペア
These go into mechanics about the capture element of the game in how the monster transfers ownership and success rate indicators, smoothly switching between ridable objects, and success-rate and aiming mechanics. One of these patents, JP7528390, was amended adding more wording but without the core concept during the actual litigation. This patent in particular relates to the concept of the riding of objects. But parts of this overall lawsuit (2024-031879) have been rejected by the Japanese Patent Office ultimately due to lacking originality and even cited Pokémon GO.
As a result of the lawsuit, Palworld have had to make changes to parts of their game as noted in a statement saying: “On November 30th, 2024, we released Patch v0.3.11 for Palworld. This patch removed the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres and instead changed it to a static summon next to the player. Several other game mechanics were also changed with this patch. As many have speculated, these changes were indeed a result of the ongoing litigation. Everyone here at Pocketpair was disappointed that this adjustment had to be made, and we fully understand that many players feel the same frustration. Unfortunately, as the alternative would have led to an even greater deterioration of the gameplay experience for players, it was determined that this change was necessary.” And also have to ride a glider rather than on the monster’s back like in everything else involving resemblance of manipulating unintelligent creatures. The legal battle is ongoing as of January 2026 and has halted Palworld’s development according to a statement Palworld 1.0, Pocketpair and The Future – YouTube
What makes the Palworld lawsuit matter to all gamers and also to outside of the gaming industry is what it’s becoming. Corporate greed should of course, be anticipated in capitalism and especially a late stage such as the one we find ourselves in that then makes an argument for the morality of virtual theft. The naivety of movements like ‘Stop Killing Games‘ are noble in gesture and commendable in their momentum but ultimately derived of false consciousness. The Pokémon Company, and Nintendo Co., Ltd share ownership of patents covering various mechanics in Pokémon. They like all good capitalists are trying to pre-emptively brook all opposition with government reinforcement, and not just images of characters. But in this case actual game mechanics. Staking their claim to the ownership of the creature collector genre in general. To say, actually I own the philosophy of that function and however it enacts in this manner. That action and outcome, is mine, if performed by others and I am deserving of the value it creates and the knock-on consequences to how ideas are sold.
In the granted US patent 12,409,387 on the 9th of September, 2025 and an abstract that reads: In an example of a game program, a ground boarding target object or an air boarding target object is selected by a selection operation, and a player character is caused to board the selected boarding target object. If the player character aboard the air boarding target object moves toward the ground, the player character is automatically changed to the state where the player character is aboard the ground boarding target object, and brought into the state where the player character can move on the ground. ( Patent No.: US 12,409,387 B2 : USPTO : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive )
It should be apparent to everyone how desirable it is for owners of intellectual property to be able to expand the reach of their grab and this case is then influential to subsequent lawsuits and will be a tell in how developed we – or particularly the U.S., which has enabled the first step – as to how this outcome unfolds.
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Nintendo made a change to their Account User Agreement that states “Without limitation, you agree that you may not (a) publish, copy, modify, reverse engineer, lease, rent, decompile, disassemble, distribute, offer for sale, or create derivative works of any portion of the Nintendo Account Services;” and then later says: ” in each case, without Nintendo’s written consent or express authorization, or unless otherwise expressly permitted by applicable law. You acknowledge that if you fail to comply with the foregoing restrictions Nintendo may render the Nintendo Account Services and/or the applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.” So you aren’t actually buying private property.
Nintendo’s Sword of Private Property Justice notably swung in the case of the appropriately named, Gary Bowser, a member of Team Xecuter, a hacker group that makes mod chips and jailbreaking software for game consoles. Gary was indicted in 2020.
On October 2, 2020, a press release from the United States Attorney’s Office titled ‘Two members of notorious videogame piracy group “Team Xecuter” in custody’. “MAX LOUARN, 48, a French national of Avignon, France, YUANNING CHEN, 35, a Chinese national of Shenzhen, China, and GARY BOWSER, 51, a Canadian national of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, were charged in a federal indictment unsealed today.”
According to court documentation filed 02/03/22: “Not only did the group distribute these “circumvention devices,” it also pirated and distributed video games created for those consoles. ” “Gary Bowser was the public face of Team Xecuter. In that capacity, he marketed the group’s products, posted news releases about new and updated products, worked with retailers who distributed the group’s products, and fielded inquiries from customers. ” “For the reasons set forth below, the United States respectfully recommends that the Court impose a sentence of 60 months, three years of supervised release, and apportioned restitution in the amount of $4.5 million.”
But it doesn’t stop there. According to Case 2:21-cv-00519-RSL Document 23 Filed 12/06/21 stating that Gary the defendant consents to judgement in favour of Nintendo to enter monetary relief in the sum of US$10,000,000.
As of February 10, 2022, a press release from the United States Attorney’s office states “Seattle – The public face of a notorious video game piracy group was sentenced today to 40 months in prison for two federal felonies, announced U.S. Attorney Nick Brown. ” And quoted a sentencing memo: “When video games are illegally copied and when circumvention devices become readily available, the video game industry—and the broader economy—experience a negative ripple effect…. This leads, at a minimum, to fewer incentives to create, and a less vibrant game scene.” Hmm… Debatable.
What are you in for? Murder. What about you? Rape. And you Gary, what you in for? I made copies of Mario Kart. You disgust me Gary. But according to the Guardian, Gary’s involvement was only that of a middleman: “I started becoming a middleman in between the people doing the development work, and the people actually owning the mod chips, playing the games,” he says. “I would get feedback from the testers, and then I would send it to the developers … I can handle people, and that’s why I ended up getting more involved.”
After his prison release on March 28, 2023, Gary was put into quarantine before being released and has been making his payments to Nintendo – 25 to 30 per cent of his gross monthly income – that he’s likely to do for the rest of his life.
You can learn more about Gary’s history here or can see him after his release, interviewed on the BeyondTrust podcast.
In a world where privacy is rapidly decreasing, the consumer’s desire for distracting entertainment has created a machine that, despite the copious amount of wealth siphoned, will swing their sword not just against those they deem pirates that distribute their recipe without their tax, but also the scallywags that don’t pay up.
Whilst it makes for great memes and headlines watching Nintendo maraud the digital landscape for any form of resemblance, the beneficiaries of consumer power, that’s you and me by the way, might do best to be cautious of this monster we’ve generationally created. Especially if they are willing to throw a man in a locked cage, for ‘stealing’ something that doesn’t physically exist. I don’t think it would be wise to simply dismiss that as do the crime, do the time.
If given the opportunity, in our society as governments and capitalists alike continue to encroach on citizen online privacy, based on their actions, would Nintendo hesitate to sue all those that play knockoffs of their games as they move to copyright aspects inside a game? You think they would draw a line and say no to all forms of retelling and emulation alike must pay financial homage to Nintendo? ‘No, they’re a noble company that helped make my childhood with their colourful characters or something’ you may decry. If their unprecedented global success doesn’t muzzle their policing, I very much doubt any kind of consumer that doesn’t exclusively hand-feed from the reach of their property means anything whatsoever, should they have their way.
There is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to Nintendo’s conquests dating back to NES’s release.
