Update []: Last week, a handful of Nintendo patents that appeared to be destined for the ongoing Palworld lawsuit were approved in the US, while another (no. 18/652,883) was rejected on 22 of its 23 claims. It's easy to look at that second result and assume the worst for the patent in question; however, as Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara recently explained to Yahoo Japan (via Automaton), these rejected claims are far from a death blow to Nintendo.
In our original post (below), we clarified that Nintendo's remaining "objected" claim in the mostly-rejected patent gave the company the chance to reword and resubmit the application. According to Kurihara, this is a pretty common practice when it comes to patents getting approved, with broader claims being rejected on the grounds of lacking inventiveness and more specific ones getting the go-ahead.
The patent attorney explains that the surviving claim gives Nintendo the chance to modify the entire application for resubmission, with the company still able to fight the rejected points via appeals.
So, there we have it. While the "final rejection" note on Nintendo patent 18/652,883 may have implied an unexpected step back in the company's case, such a development is really just par for the course in the world of patent submissions.
Original Story: We have been following Nintendo's Palworld lawsuit for the best part of six months now, and while we have grown to have a better understanding of the particular patents involved, all of the infringement claims have been tied to Japan. However, in recent months, it seems that Nintendo has been preparing to bring the lawsuit stateside, with a handful of applications now appearing in the US Patent Office.
As reported by Games Fray, Nintendo has had three patent applications approved in the US in recent months — no. 12179111 in December 2024, 12194382 in January, and 12220638 earlier this week on 11th February. While the middle of the three doesn't appear to be all that relevant to the Palworld case (it was filed in 2022 and is all about exchanging items with other players), the remaining two were filed after Palworld's launch and specifically detail creature-catching mechanics — the specifics of which appear to be integral to the lawsuit in Japan.
As is the case with the Japanese patents, these U.S. applications are derived from a "parent patent" established before Palworld's launch. So, while the specifics were established after the fact, their links to the parent patent would make them valid in this instance.
Interestingly, Games Fray also highlights another Nintendo U.S. patent (18/652,883), which was actually filed back in September 2024, but was recently rejected by the patent office on 22 of the application's 23 claims — and the final claim (which seemingly relates to switching out creatures that you can ride) was merely "objected" to.
The "objection" gives Nintendo the chance to rewrite the claim and submit it independently, though that would leave the company with a patent consisting of only a single claim (and, generally, the more claims you have, the more likely the accused party will have infringed on the patent).
While it remains to be seen what approach Nintendo will take with the rejected application, there are still two that have been accepted by the patent office and appear to relate to the Palworld lawsuit in Japan. The original case is still underway at the time of writing, but approvals like this have us thinking that it won't be long before it formally heads stateside.