Patent disputes tend to be dry. What Japan’s Patent Office published this month is not. In a formal written decision, the JPO called Nintendo’s counter-argument to a rejected Pokémon patent application an “absurd misunderstanding” — language so pointed that one Japanese IP attorney described it as “rarely seen in standard patent practice.” The examiner was not done there.
What Nintendo Was Trying to Patent
The application at the centre of this is Nintendo Patent Application 2026-019762, a joint filing by Nintendo and The Pokémon Company related to systems for capturing monsters on touchscreen devices. It is part of a broader family of patent applications Nintendo has submitted covering Pokémon catching, battling, and riding mechanics — the same patent family that includes the patents currently being enforced against Palworld developer Pocketpair in a separate, ongoing legal dispute.
This particular application was first rejected by the JPO in April 2026, on the grounds that it lacked “an inventive step” — meaning the examiners found the described mechanics too similar to preexisting work to qualify for patent protection. Specifically, the examiner cited a 13-year-old gameplay video of Pokémon: Generations, an unofficial fan-made game that resembled the systems Nintendo claimed to have invented more than a decade later.
Nintendo’s Argument — and Why the JPO Rejected It
Nintendo’s response was to attack the citation itself. The company argued that the JPO had acted “extremely inappropriately” by referencing a copyright-infringing fan game as prior art. The implication was that an examiner could not legitimately use an unauthorised Pokémon derivative as evidence against a Nintendo patent application.
The JPO disagreed with some force. Japanese patent law, the examiner noted, “contains no provision excluding inventions that infringe upon the copyright of others.” Whether a cited work infringes copyright, the office continued, “is irrelevant to the inventive step judgment, and this view is considered standard among patent practitioners.” As for Nintendo’s suggestion that the examiner had confused the fan game for an official Pokémon product: the JPO called this an “absurd misunderstanding” and added that even if such a misunderstanding were theoretically possible, it would have “no bearing on the inventive step judgment.”
“Accuracy should take precedence” — Japan Patent Office, responding to Nintendo’s counter-argument
What This Means for Palworld
The short answer: not much directly. This patent application is separate from the two patents Nintendo is currently seeking to enforce against Pocketpair in the Palworld lawsuit, though it belongs to the same patent family. Its approval would not have helped Pocketpair, and its rejection does not hurt Nintendo’s active case against Palworld.
The broader significance is what the JPO’s tone reveals about the limits of Nintendo’s patent strategy. The company has been aggressively filing applications covering monster-catching, creature-battling, and survival mechanics, with some granted and others rejected. In this instance, the examiner was not merely unconvinced — they were visibly exasperated, producing a formal document that patent professionals are describing as unusually combative in its language.
What Happens Next
Nintendo has three months from the date of the rejection decision to file a petition for an appeal trial before JPO judges. According to the JPO’s own online records, the company appears to have already filed that petition — the patent’s status is now listed as “rejection decision under review.” Further divisional patent applications with more carefully drafted claims remain an option regardless of how that appeal proceeds.
Nintendo’s patent campaign in this area is not over. But the JPO’s willingness to use language like “absurd misunderstanding” in an official document suggests that the examiner, at least, has run out of patience with the argument being made.
