While Nintendo has a long and infamous history of petty litigiousness, its recent efforts to secure a series of Pokémon-related patents have been particularly obnoxious—obnoxious enough that even the Japan Patent Office seems like its patience for the publisher’s quibbling is wearing thin.
Earlier this month, Japanese patent examiners issued a rebuke of Nintendo’s objections to a Patent Office’s prior rejections of one of the publisher’s Pokémon patent applications. In its refusal of the publisher’s arguments, the JPO’s examiner was so atypically blunt that Japanese patent attorney Kiyoshi Kurihara described the exchange as containing “things rarely seen in standard patent practice” (via Automaton).
At the heart of this particular squabble is Nintendo’s Patent Application 2026-019762, one of a number of patent applications the company has submitted in an attempt to secure ownership over systems related to Pokémon catching, battling, and riding. While the publisher has successfully been granted some of those patents—like those cited in its ongoing legal dispute with Palworld developer Pocketpair—the JPO sent a notice of refusal for the 2026-019762 patent application in April 2026.
Something can’t be patented if it doesn’t demonstrate “an inventive step” indicating it wouldn’t be obvious for other practitioners in the relevant field, and the JPO examiner found that the Pokémon mechanics that the 2026-019762 application described were too similar to “prior art,” or preexisting works.