Key highlights:
- Honkai Nexus Anima, a brand-new game from HoYoverse infringes upon Nintendo’s Mounts Patent.
- While the company hasn’t sued them yet, a lawsuit could be on the cards.
- Being a Chinese company, they could avoid the lawsuit entirely, but that would open a fresh can of worms altogether.
Honkai Nexus Anima is a brand-new HoYoverse game which looks like it’ll have something to do with taming pets. Being a HoYoverse title, it’s bound to have gacha elements, but it could soon be on Nintendo’s radar, because it infringes upon a patent.
Over the past few months, Nintendo and PocketPair have been embroiled in a patent battle over Palworld. Nintendo claims that Palworld features a lot of mechanics, which include riding ground and flying pets, something that Nintendo holds a patent over. Given that Honkai Nexus Anima showcased a feature similar to why Palworld is having to fight a legal battle, it could also be on the receiving end of a lawsuit.
Honkai Nexus Anima Could Face a Lawsuit Over Nintendo’s Mounts Patent
According to Florian Mueller at Games Fray, the mount system that Honkai Nexus Anima has showcased in their latest video on X, falls under Nintendo’s patent. The game hasn’t launched yet, and is still under development. So, HoYoverse could change it, should they face any legal heat from Pokemon’s parent company. However, that would only happen if Nintendo decides to sue them.
In-game footage from Honkai: Nexus Anima
*The game is under development, and subject to change.
*This Nexus Bond Test is available in 5 languages: Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, and Korean. Support for more languages will be added in the future.… pic.twitter.com/gayxpcVOYV— Honkai: Nexus Anima (@HonkaiNA) August 29, 2025
If that does happen, then HoYoverse and PocketPair could be fighting the same battle, which could make things a little difficult for Nintendo. However, if Honkai Nexus Anima changes its systems even before a lawsuit, it could be assumed that Nintendo strong-armed them into making the said changes. Additionally, if Nintendo doesn’t sue HoYoverse, then it wouldn’t be a proper approach. In an ideal world, the company should be suing both of them. But if it just sues one and leaves the other (legally they can do that if they want to), it would be anti-competitive and would open yet another can of worms.
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Why Did Nintendo Sue Palworld?
Nintendo sued Palworld because it claims that the game copied a lot of mechanics and animations that we usually see in Pokemon. It’s common knowledge that when Palworld first came out, it was being touted as Pokemon with guns. The game had an item called a Palsphere, with which you could catch different monsters and then summon them at will.
Additionally, the game also featured an ability to smoothly switch between two different mounts, something which wasn’t compared in Nintendo’s patents. However, when they realised that they’d end up losing the lawsuit, they modified the patent to encompass smooth switching of mounts as well.
At this point, the case is very much still in court and there’s not been any headway yet. However, the fact that the Japanese Patent Office allowed Nintendo to modify their patent mid-lawsuit is a matter of concern at this point. With the way the patent is worded right now, Nintendo could sue a lot of other video game companies for infringing upon their intellectual property. With the Palworld case, there are a lot of negative sentiments that are on the rise against Nintendo, but that might not affect the outcome of the lawsuit.
Considering that Honkai Nexus Anima is still in its developmental stage, they’ve got all the means to avoid the lawsuit completely, if they manage to change the mount mechanic, but they’ll have to come up with something entirely unique.
Nintendo’s amendment to their patent could prevent all video game developers from including that mechanic in whatever games they make henceforth, but that’s an unlikely scenario. HoYoverse is a big Chinese developer, and Honkai Nexus Anima does contain a lot of Pokemon-like characters too. So, it remains to be seen if Nintendo would like to go up against a Chinese giant or if they’d choose to just flex their power over a indie Japanese company.
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