As we've seen with this Palworld lawsuit

Okay stop it right there, there's a lot (and I do mean a lot) of moving pieces that is going into that lawsuit. The major thing is that the narrative that everyone i've talked to seems to have latched onto and not know anything about it is that they think it's a big company is bullying a small indie dev, however that isn't even remotely true because Pocketpair had officially in July 2024 (so it likely had been in the works for months, or up to a year beforehand) entered into a partnership with Sony, the same kind of relationship that Gamefreak entered with Nintendo back in the day when creating Pokemon. And as a short history lesson, Nintendo and Sony don't like eachother, and if you want to know why look into the original Playstation, the CD based SNES one, and ultimately why the Philips CDi came into existence.

Yes I am insinuating that the lawsuit is happening purely because of Pocketpair making a bit of a faustian bargain with Sony, and there's plenty of reasons to point to that being the reason. Like did you know that the damages that Nintendo is demanding from Pocketpair for allegedly violating patents is 10 million yen (and halting distribution, but that part is very normal for court cases in general), roughly $65,000 USD? Yes actual chump change for Sony, and also very low for what you'd think a patent lawsuit would bring in. Not to mention that patent lawsuits are inherently very risky endeavors to begin with, considering that right now it looks like both Nintendo and Sony are playing a game a chicken, and daring the other to blink first there's only a couple results that ends up happening. Nintendo wins, and forces Sony+Pocketpair to seriously reconsider how they market and merchandise the Palworld IP going forward, while also likely more clearly defining Nintendo's patents. Nintendo loses, yet has their patent affirmed, and more clearly defined. Nintendo loses, and has their patent invalidated. In all three results, they still get to make Sony bleed for doing from what Nintendo's pov is, a blatant encroachment of territory by Sony.

The closest thing I can think of something like this happening in the past was when Sega sued Radical over alleged patent infringement in The Simpsons: Road Rage, except there it felt more like it was simply because Simpsons Road Rage was so much just a Crazy Taxi copy paste job with a Simpsons coat of paint dumped all over it.