Patent rights? You gotta be kidding me. The hell did they patent? Throwing a ball?
Apparently, in their LONG list of patents, is one for the in-game Pokemon Storage Box. Just speculation, of course, but that could be one the Pokemon Company cites.
Almost literally. They patented:
-
catching characters in thrown balls
-
calling on characters by throwing a ball
-
using captured characters to fight and harvest resources
@nonprofitparrot, if you have the links to the patents at hand, it would be grand if you can share them.
Scroll past the nintendo switch. https://imgur.com/gallery/pokemons-patent-vs-palworld-jp-7398425-b-zFDuKSc
To be clear, no official source has released these patents as definitively relevant to this case. But they sure look relevant.