Recent headlines have sensationalized Nintendo’s patent filings in the US, leading a lot of people following the legal dispute between Palworld and Nintendo to believe that Nintendo filed 23 “anti-Palworld” patents and had 22 of them rejected by the US patent office in some kind of devastating blow. However, as Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara explains for Yahoo Japan, this interpretation is misleading and stems from a misunderstanding of how patent applications work in the first place.
The controversy originates from a single patent application (No. 18/652,883), which focuses on gameplay mechanics involving a player riding a character (or mounts, more simply put). Within this application, Nintendo submitted 23 claims – individual aspects of the invention they sought to patent. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) initially rejected 22 of these claims, while one remained viable.
Kurihara clarifies that this is a routine outcome in patent reviews. Patent applications often include a mix of broad and narrow claims. The broader ones are often rejected on the grounds of lacking novelty or inventiveness, while the narrower ones stand a better chance of gaining approval. In this case, despite what the words “final rejection” may sound like, Nintendo has the right to modify its application based on the surviving claim, and it can still attempt to contest the rejections through continued filings or appeals.
While the original report by Games Fray correctly framed this and provided a detailed overview of what’s going on with Nintendo’s patents in the US, subsequent reports exaggerated (or simply misunderstood) the issue, with the most egregious examples suggesting that Nintendo had submitted 23 separate patents and lost 22 of them outright. The misunderstanding spread wide enough to affect even news outlets in Japan, which prompted a reaction from Kurihara.
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