USPTO To Re-Examine Recently Approved Nintendo Patent

from the try-try-again dept

Well, this is actually pretty fascinating. We’ve been discussing the somewhat bizzare patent lawsuit Nintendo is waging against PocketPair in Japan for some time now. PocketPair is the company behind the hit game Palworld, which has obviously drawn inspiration from the Pokémon franchise, without doing any direct copying. Powering this attack were several held or applied-for patents in Japan that cover some pretty general gameplay elements, most, if not all, of which have plenty of prior art in previous games and/or game mods. Most recently, two things happened on opposite sides of the ocean. In September, the USPTO approved a couple of new, but related patents in a manner that had at least one patent attorney calling it an “embarrassing failure.” Separately, in Japan, a patent that Nintendo applied for, which sits in between two approved patents that are being wielded in the Palworld lawsuit, was rejected for being unoriginal and for which prior art exists. Given how interrelated that patent is with the other approved patents, the same logic would apply to the approved patents, bringing into question whether all of these patents should just be invalidated.

Back on the USPTO side, one of the patents that was approved without proper due diligence was patent #12,403,397 and covers the summoning a “sub character” that will either fight at your command or fight autonomously based on input from the player. Again, prior art abounds in this sort of thing, which is the “embarrassing failure” mentioned earlier.

Well, in what is apparently the first time in a decade, USPTO Director John Squires personally ordered a re-examination of this patent.

John A Squires has personally ordered a re-examination of the patent, citing previous patents which might make it invalid. Specifically, Squires has focused on the patent’s claim to having a sub-character fight alongside you with the option to make them fight either automatically or via manual control. In his order, Squires said he had “determined that substantial new questions of patentability have arisen” based on the publications of two previous patents, named as Yabe and Taura.

The Yabe patent was granted in 2002 to Konami, and refers to a sub-character fighting alongside the player either automatically or manually, while the Taura patent was granted in 2020 to Nintendo itself, and also refers to a sub-character who battles alongside the player.

Yes, one of the previous patents that might invalidate this one is held by Nintendo itself. And I would argue that these gameplay mechanic patents are still far too generic and obvious to those in the industry to be patentable at all. That isn’t Squires’ argument, however. Instead, the original examiner did some true tilting at windmills to pretend like prior art didn’t exist because of minute specifics in this new patent and so never considered the Yabe and Taura patents.

While this doesn’t directly relate to the patent suit in Japan, it’s hard not to see this in the context of the patent rejection in Japan, never mind how the rest of this weird lawsuit is going, and not see that this is a house of cards that is collapsing in on Nintendo.

And, most importantly, I still can’t see how any of this is worth it for Nintendo. Bad publicity, legal costs, time, energy, effort, and for what? Palworld is still a hit and the Pokémon franchise is still strong. What are we doing here?

Filed Under: japan, john squires, patents, pokemon, us, uspto

Companies: nintendo, pocketpair, pokemon company