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Context: Nintendo’s patent infringement litigation against Palworld maker Pocketpair is still ongoing. Nintendo clings to all sorts of theories to defend its patents against Pocketpair’s invalidity arguments, including the position that mods should not count as prior art (September 16, 2025 games fray article). It may be part of a PR strategy to distort the reality of who was first to create what, given that Nintendo itself is apparently developing a PokĂ©mon spinoff with Palworld-like elements (October 14, 2025 games fray article).
What’s new: A decision called Office action, made by a patent examiner of the Japan Patent Office (JPO) less than two weeks ago, casts serious doubt on the validity of two of Nintendo’s three Japanese patents-in-suit. This is about pending application no. 2024-031879 that is a sibling of one of those anti-Palworld “monster capture” patents and the parent of another. It has been rejected (on a non-final basis) because the patent office, after a third-party submission of prior art, determined that the claimed technique lacked an inventive step. The prior art references cited by the JPO include various games that predate Nintendo’s December 2021 priority date, among them Studio Wildcard’s ARK, Capcom’s Monster Hunter 4, Pocketpair’s Craftopia, a Japanese brower game named Kantai Collection (Web Archive link), and PokĂ©mon GO.
Direct impact:
- Nintendo now faces the choice between abandoning the embattled patent application or, which is the more likely next step, trying to persuade the patent examiner based on a modified patent application with amended claims. Also, when the process at the patent office is over, an appeal to a specialized court named Intellectual Property High Court (IPHC) is possible. The Japanese patent prosecution process has even been described as an “endless loop” (World Intellectual Property Report). But the fact that the patent examiner is now looking at real-world games as opposed to just patent documents and articles considerably ups the ante for Nintendo.
- For the avoidance of doubt, even if this Nintendo application fails, there is no direct impact on the Palworld patent case. However, see the next section…
Wider ramifications:
- The (non-finally) rejected patent application is a key building block of Nintendo’s “monster capture” patenting strategy that took aim at Palworld after its early-2024 release. It has the same parent application as JP7493117 and is the parent of JP7545191, both of which Nintendo is asserting against Palworld (February 6, 2025 games fray article). Just like the applications that led to the patents-in-suit, this application was filed shortly after Palworld’s release.
- An issue facing a central member of a patent family is often indicative of validity problems facing other memers.
- The overlap between the invalidity contentions underlying the rejection and Pocketpair’s defenses (April 18, 2025 games fray article) makes it plausible that Pocketpair could be behind an April 2025 submission to the JPO in connection with this Nintendo patent application.
- A JPO decision, much less a non-final one, is not binding on Presiding Judge Motoyuki Nakashima, who is handling the Nintendo v. Pocketpair case. But judges are legally trained and tend to have respect for the determinations made by patent examiners, who are technically trained. Pocketpair might try to point the Tokyo District Court to relevant developments in the JPO. In the U.S., that would be called a request for judicial notice, and can influence decisions. We assume that there will not be a decision of any kind in the infringement case before next year. The proceedings have been delayed, presumably due to what the next bullet point mentions:
- Nintendo’s third patent-in-suit is also in trouble: they felt forced to seek a modification in the middle of litigation (July 16, 2025 games fray article).
We will now show you the original information we found on the JPO’s website.
First, here’s a screenshot of the patent family tree as displayed on the JPO’s website:
You can see that application 2024-031879 (the number 2024-059945 below is the publication number)
- stems from application 2023-204842 (publication number 2024-020611, ultimately granted as JP7505852 and now being used against Palworld), and
- “gave birth to” application 2024-123560 (publication number 2024-149570 and ultimately granted as JP7545191, which is equally being used against Palworld).
What’s happening here is an example of what the games industry at large should increasingly consider: pointing patent offices to relevant prior art during the examination process. That’s a form of prophylaxis.
Florian Mueller
As you’ve probably figured out, the first four digits of those application and publication numbers indicate a year. When patent applications are processed on the regular track (as opposed to a company opting for the fast track), it takes 18 months from filing to publication. As the numbers indicate, the first two members of this patent family were on the regular track, so the application and publication numbers have different years, but after Palworld’s launch, they fast-tracked everything, which is why those 2024 applications were still published and some even granted that same year. It went smoothly except for the ‘879 application, and now someone (possibly Pocketpair) is mounting resistance.
Here’s a screenshot of the examination record. It shows an April 9, 2025 “notification of submission of publications” and an October 22, 2025 notice of refusal:
And, finally, here’s the JPO’s machine translation of the notice of rejection:
Notice of Reasons for Refusal (PatentsApplication2024-031879)
* NOTICES *
JPO and INPIT are not responsible for any damages caused by the use of this translation.1.This document has been translated by computer. So the translation may not reflect the original precisely.2.**** shows the word which can not be translated.
Notice of Reasons for Refusal
Patent Application Number: Japanese Patent Application No. 2024 to 031879
Proposed Date: October 17, 2025
JPO Examiner: Kazumasa Nakamura 4401 2D00
Representative: Ryo Teramoto (and one other person)
Applicable provisions: Article 29, Paragraph 2 (inventive step)
This application should be refused for the reason mentioned below. If the applicant has any opinion(s) against the reason, a written opinion should be submitted within 60 days from the date on which this notification was dispatched.
Reason 1. (Inventive step) The claimed invention(s) listed below of this patent application shall not be granted a patent under the provision of Patent Act Article 29 (2) for the reason that the claimed invention(s) could have easily been made by persons who have common knowledge in the technical field to which the claimed invention(s) pertains, on the basis of the invention(s) described in the distributed publication listed below or made available to the public through electricitytelecommunication lines in Japan or other foreign countries prior to the filingof the patent application . (see, in particular, video time [02:23] – [05:32]) describes an invention relating to a game program in which in a game called “ARK”, the relative positional relation between the aiming of the blue cross displayed in the center of the screen and the enemy character is adjusted by moving the angle of view, a pod is directed to the aiming direction and is thrown by a human-like player character, a dwarf-like battle character appears from the pod, and a battle between the enemy character and the battle character is started.
Cited Document 2 describes that an enemy character can be attacked using various weapons in a game called “ARK”, and when the descriptions of “a tool that can be used to cause coma” and “how to use a bow” are combined, it is deemed that Cited Document 2 describes that a parameter called a coma value is increased by hitting an enemy character with a paralytic arrow, and when the coma value satisfies a predetermined condition, the enemy character becomes comatose. Then, since the invention described in Cited Document 1 also relates to a game called “ARK”, by applying the above-mentioned matters described in Cited Document 2, a paralytic arrow that causes an enemy character to be in a coma is shot to raise a parameter called a coma value (“when an event item that progresses an in-game event is shot to a player character in the aiming direction and the event item hits a field character arranged on a field in a virtual space, a state parameter of the field character is changed”), a pod is thrown to the player character in the aiming direction, a dwarf-like battle character appears from the pod, and a battle between the enemy character and the battle character is started (“when a battle character that performs a battle is shot to the player character in the aiming direction and the battle character is shot to a place where the field character is arranged, A battle between the field character and the battle character on the field is started “), and in such a game program, when the enemy character is put into a coma by the paralysis arrow (” when the state parameter of the field character has reached a predetermined value due to the hit of the event item “) It is clear that it is possible to perform an operation of causing the player character to throw the pod in the aiming direction to start a battle.
(Regarding Claims 2, 6, 10, and 14) The game “ARK” can attack an enemy character by using various weapons (“a plurality of theevent items”). “ARK” can cause the enemy character to be in a coma (“restrict the movement of the field character in the virtual space”) by using the paralysis arrow. – Claims 4, 8, 12, and 16 – Cited Document, etc. 1-3 – Remarks
In the technical field of games that battle with enemy characters, it is well known that a predetermined gauge is reduced by winning a battle with a boss, and an in-game event can be cleared by cutting off the gauge (see, for example, “a method for reducing a transport gauge” in Cited Document 3), and therefore, in the invention described in Cited Document 1, a person skilled in the art could have appropriately conceived of adopting the above-mentioned well-known technique to configure such that the predetermined gauge is reduced by defeating the enemy character, and the in-game event can be cleared by cutting off the gauge, and in this case, it is merely a design matter that could have been appropriately selected by a person skilled in the art as necessary to configure such that the reduction amount of the gauge is relatively increased by using a predetermined item during the battle with the enemy character.
<The list of cited documents etc.>1. See HRK Unconsciousness Game record, Huge beast manipulating freeze! Subjugate Ice Titan! ARK [Extinction] Chapter 20, YouTube [online] ,2020 December 12, [searched on August 15, 2023], <URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kj0VKPqSByA >, video time [02:23] – [05:32].2. See the list of tools that can be used for [ARK] time (computer version), dolls dream in four and-a-half tatami mats [3. [KanColle] Explanation of Transportation Gauge Kantai Collection (KanColle) Capture Wiki, Game Ramai, August 26, 2019, [searched on August 16, 2023], <URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20190626023829/https://gameranbu.jp/kancolle/d645dca6a06bc701f7ea >, see the column of “Method for Reducing Transportation Gauge” (document showing well-known technique) 06(Note) Some or all of the submitted non-patent documents may not be due to sent to legal or contractual restrictions.—————————————————————————
Record of the result of prior art search-Areas examined:IPCA63F9/24, 13/00 – 13 / 98-Prior Art Document: [Craft Pia] How to Catch Monsters / How to Live a MonsterHow to use, Craftpier Capture Wiki [Craftopia] [online], 09/21/2020, [retrieved on 10/17/2025], <URL: How to use https://gamerch.com/craftopia-wiki/187920#outline__ monster> [MHW] How to capture monsters and how to do it. The anesthetic ball is basic using a large trap, don’t forget to weaken it, ARUTORA, 2018 / 01 / 30, [retrieved on August 16, 2023], <URL: https://arutora.com/14874#5>, see text and figures CAPCOM, bottom screen operation during quest, Monster Hunter 4 official web manual, 2014 / 05 / 12, [retrieved on August 16, 2023], <URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20140512070052/http://game.capcom.com:80/manual/MH4/ja/page-26.html>, see the column of “target camera” [Pokemon Go] Tips on how to catch! Also explain the capture rate -, Gamewiz, 2019 / 10 / 11, [retrieved on August 17, 2023], <URL:https://pokemongo.gamewith.jp/article/show/26440> See “Relationship between Capture Rates and Circles” Sami Ad, [MHP3] ****** Hunting Number Reached 100, Grilled Well?, 08 / 08 / 2011, [retrieved 8 / 8 / 2023], <URL: samiadoraven. blog31. fc2. com/blog-entry – 768. html>, See text and drawings [ARK Mobile] Castreides (Beavers) Are Two Secrets Essential to Tame!, ARK Capture Wiki, 28/12/2018, [retrieved 16/8/2023], <URL: https://70okugame.com/ark/%E3%80%90ARK%E3%83%A2%E3%83%90%E3%82%A4%E3%83%AB %E3%80%91%E3%82%AB%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88%E3%83%AD%E3%82%A4%E3%83%87%E3%82%B9>, See “How to Operate Castreides” CAPCOM, Item Gathering / Stripping Monster Hunter 4 Official Web Manual, October 16, 2014, [retrieved August 16, 2023], <URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20141016031929/http://game.capcom.com:80/manual/MH4/ja/page-49.html> See text and figures The record of this prior art document search result does not constitute a reason for refusal. If you have any questions about the contents of this notice of reasons for refusal or would like to have an interview, please contact us at the following address. If you wish to send us a draft amendment, please let us know in advance. When contacting us by e-mail, please write your name, affiliation, application number, telephone number, and the name of the following examiner (assistant), and contact us at the following e-mail address (*). If there is anything unclear about the content of the e-mail, we may confirm it by phone.
Office of User Experience Kazumasa Nakamura
TEL. 03-3581-1101, Extension 3239 * â—‹â—‹â—‹â—‹@ jpo. go. jp (Replace with “â—‹â—‹â—‹â—‹” and enter “PA2D”).
Chief Examiner / Deputy, Examiner, Assistant Examiner Yohei Matsuya, Kazumasa Nakamura, 3410 4401