Japan's patent office calls out Nintendo's 'absurd' Pokémon patent arguments

Japan's Patent Office has publicly rebuked Nintendo's attempts to salvage a rejected Pokémon-related patent application, with examiners using unusually blunt language that patent experts say is rarely seen in standard Japanese patent practice.

The dispute centers on Nintendo's Patent Application 2026-019762, one of several applications the company filed to lock down systems related to Pokémon catching, battling, and riding. The JPO rejected it in April 2026, citing a 13-year-old gameplay video of an unofficial fan-made Pokémon game as prior art — evidence that the mechanics Nintendo claimed weren't novel. Nintendo pushed back in June with a written opinion arguing, among other things, that a video of a game isn't the same as a game itself, so it shouldn't count as prior art. Nintendo also argued that because the fan game used Pokémon characters without a license, it constituted copyright infringement — and that something illegal can't be considered obvious practice in the field. It even complained that the examiner had referred to the characters in the video by their actual names, Pikachu and Bulbasaur, rather than phrases like "a character that infringes on Pikachu."

The JPO was not impressed. Its examiner flatly rejected every argument, noting that Japanese patent law has no provision excluding prior art on the basis of copyright infringement, and that whether a cited work infringes copyright is entirely irrelevant to assessing inventive step. Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara, writing via Automaton, described the exchange as containing things rarely seen in standard patent practice — a sign of how unusual Nintendo's arguments were considered to be. Nintendo has had more success with other Pokémon-related patents in this same filing push, including patents it is actively using in its ongoing legal dispute against Palworld developer Pocketpair.

The rejection is a rare public stumble for a company that has spent years aggressively expanding its patent portfolio. Whether Nintendo appeals further or lets this particular application die remains to be seen, but the JPO's unusually direct language suggests the examiner had little patience left for the publisher's line of reasoning.