Forum - View topicNEWS: US Patent Office Rejects Nintendo Patent Involving Summoning Characters to Fight
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Firefly251
Posts: 451 |
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for those who don't keep up: this is a big deal as this means both JP (happened last year) and US patent offices have rejected one of the core claims in the entire case.
Nintendo is likely to counter the ruling and drag it out longer but this is overall a big boon for gaming industry as a whole (as if you dont know these patents would of impacted other games from dark souls and more it was extremely wide casting patent) |
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Sinxi and heylog
Posts: 206 |
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Damn, even in jp? Welp thats not good for nintendo |
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Florete
Posts: 461 |
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Now there's a piece of good news that I wasn't expecting. Just gotta hope it sticks.
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FishLion
 Crazy Fangirl Posts: 856 |
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I heard the opposite, that it was an extremely narrow patent that basically said don't take the exact form factor and mechanics of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet and copy them into your game. Of course IANAL so I can't tell their intentions personally, but it definitely didn't seem like they were targeting Elden Ring. It specifically mentions summoning a character, moving around an open space with them, and either automatically fighting wild creatures or starting a turn-based battle with enemy characters also controlling sub characters. I don't really agree with the idea of patenting video game mechanics either, but the idea there were trying to specifically patent trap game as big as Elden Ring is just not supported by the text of the patent application. |
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AiddonValentine
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Basically; it was just a patent application in the US which has nothing to do with the lawsuit that was filed in Japan. Sorry people, this a common occurrence and not a sign of what that lawsuit is going to entail. |
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Riku157
Posts: 178 |
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It's nice seeing Nintendo lose in legal matters.
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 921 |
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Pretty much. The patent was effectively for the Let's Go mechanic in Scarlet/Violet where you'd send a Pokémon out to explore a region on the overworld on its own and the Pokémon would return later with any items it found and with whatever experience it gained from bumping into the on-map enemies along the way, not for the inherent concept of summoning creatures to battle for you. There were still difficulties for this; one edge case I saw someone point out was how this might affect something like a real-time strategy game where someone does something akin to the Let's Go mechanic where they summon a unit and assign it a random task in a given direction. Basically, this case got drowned in a ton of Nintendo Derangement Syndrome, but there were some issues once you got past peoples' knee-jerk reactions. Especially since, big as Nintendo is, it's not as big as its colleagues like Bandai Namco, and Nintendo isn't about to do something that would make enemies with Bandai. (And by all accounts, the whole matter has been water under the bridge.)
Yeah, the body of the lawsuit against Pocketpair isn't whether or not Nintendo holds a patent over any given part of Pokémon, it's whether or not Pocketpair plagiarized certain game mechanics. And has been pointed out before, patents in game mechanics are industry-standard; Bandai Namco alone has tons of patents regarding specific mechanics and input methods, some filed as recently as last year. Patent filings only ever become newsworthy when Nintendo does 'em. 
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ZelosZoidberg
 Posts: 1063 |
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Software patents shouldn't even be a thing IMO.
Not sure about other countries but the US Patent system is a broken mess. With "troll" patents being a big enough problem that even Nintendo has been the victim of the system. |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2944 |
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The only other time I can think of a game mechanic patent being mentioned is with the Middle-Earth: Shadow games' Nemesis mechanic (which was the only memorable thing from those games).
Not how that works; a lot of patent trolls try to be broad as possible in order to just get people to pay up instead of dealing with lawyers. There was a guy who trademarked "edge" which was why Soul Edge was renamed Soul Blade. That stopped when Mirror's Edge came out and he had to deal with EA's legal department. Patents have their problems, but no software patents is a no-go Last edited by AiddonValentine on Thu Apr 02, 2026 10:46 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Doubleclouder
 Posts: 162 |
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This is good news. The patent they tried to file was ridiculous and never should have gone through in the first place. At least the mistake was fixed.
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Slop Slop no Mi
 Posts: 46 |
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You always appeal every court ruling it's just common sense. So it's not over yet but I'm happy Nintendo took an L in this instance and it was a well deserved loss. Patenting gameplay is dumb especially if it's fueled out of seeing other people succeed. |
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ThatGuyInTheHoodie
Posts: 15 |
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I'm not really surprised, it was dumb to try to patent something so generic. This is a big win for the gaming ecosystem overall.
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ChimeyChime
Posts: 70 |
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This is good to hear. Hopefully it sticks.
Stupid patent trolls... 
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