Gaming IndustryPalworldNintendo is filing for the patents it’s suing Palworld with in the US as well, though some (non-final) rejections could complicate mattersWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
Gaming IndustryPalworldNintendo is filing for the patents it’s suing Palworld with in the US as well, though some (non-final) rejections could complicate mattersWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.
(Image credit: Pocketpair)
Just in case you missed it—in themiddle of September this year, the famously litigious, Pokémon rights-owning company Nintendo finally decided to roll its sleeves up and sue Palworld developer Pocketpair for patent infringement.
Patents are country-specific. There is something called thePatent Cooperation Treaty, though it’s a separate system with its own positives and negatives—Nintendo, however, appears to be going straight to the source, filing for patents in the United States directly. This makes a lot of sense, considering it has branches in America too, and a seemingly vested interest in making sure no other developer gets to play with the same toys.
This information comes courtesy of Kiyoshi Kurihara, who discovered it on behalf ofYahoo Japan(thanks,Automaton), as well as MBHB associate Andrew Velzen writing forGamesindustry.biz. The applications, which areUS18/652,874andUS18/652,883respectively, are pending at the time of writing, and were filed for earlier this year with a priority “Track One” status. The latter of which includes identical images to the ones our own Lincoln Carpenter discussed in theimmediate falloutof the news.
Velzen notes—shortening the former patent to “US-App-3” and the latter to “US-App-4”, a phrasing I’ll be borrowing so as to not bog you down with numbers—that they were both given non-final rejections. In the case of US-App-3, it was “lacking subject matter eligibility”, while US-App-4 was rejected for “obviousness”.
It’s tricky, though—when we talked to Sigmon, he noted that Nintendo isexposing itself in a “big way”. Being too broad with patents, as he notes, gives Pocketpair “a pathway to make the patent go away, because you’ve given them an opportunity to prove that it was already in existence.” Any adjustments to the US version of these patents would, one assumes, increase the risk of that happening.
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Kurihara concludes in his analysis that “although Nintendo is steadily preparing for a lawsuit in the United States, it does not seem to be in a position to file one right away.”
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