US Patent Office rejects 22 out of 23 patent claims from Nintendo amongst Palworld lawsuit

Back in September, 2024, news broke out about Nintendo suing Palworld creators, PocketPair, in Japan over many of the mechanics that Palworld uses, sharing similarities with the Pokemon franchise, in what later was confirmed to be a patent infringing lawsuit, according to Nintendo and Game Freak's claims.

While PocketPair did release a response about the whole situation later on, little has been known since then about the lawsuit between the two companies in Japanese grounds. However, this week more information was known about Nintendo's moves in the American continent, as they sought to claim 23 patents in the territory.

GamesFray, a website focused on analyzing and reporting over the litigation aspects of the gaming scene, has been following the case closely, going through Nintendo's legal trail in both continents, analyzing the case and reporting over each new step taken in the legal battle. GamesFray disclosed back in February 8th that Nintendo submitted 23 patent claims to the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

However, out of those 23 patents submitted by Nintendo, the USPTO rejected 22 out of those 23 patent claims due to those 22 patents not being considered inventive over prior existing art, leaving only one patent to Nintendo, with the USPTO willing to grant that one patent only if Nintendo drops the other 22 patent claims (since that specific patent was dependant on a rejected one).

All of this is the result of the on-going Palworld lawsuit, of course, and Nintendo's modus operandi in this situation is to try to expand the patent gripe to other territories in hopes of gathering more patents overseas, and then, once Nintendo manages to claim enough patents over their "ideas" and "mechanics" (since it has yet to be confirmed if Palworld has indeed infringed on them or not), then they can apply the same legal action against PocketPair in other countries of operation.

Of course, this being Nintendo, they will try to fight the rejected patents and will continue to pursue and flex their legal front to garner more and more patents filled in their favour, but that remains yet to be seen. Additionally, the legal battle in Japan over the patent lawsuit is still unknown, and with how Japan's laws over copyright and patents, in which the terms Fair Use and Prior Art might as well not exist, it's difficult to know if the outcome might be favourable for PocketPair or not.

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