LogInThe backlash helped the matter get noticed.
Nintendo
When Nintendo acquired a patent for summoning a character and letting it fight for the player in its legal war against Palworld's developer Pocketpair, many were outraged: the description itself could be applied to countless games, including those that had been released far before the patent, which could potentially let Nintendo sue studios left and right.
One IP attorney called it "an embarrassing failure of the US patent system," but thankfully, the US Patent and Trademark Office has noticed the backlash and ordered to reexamine the patent.
Games Fray reports that the new director of the USPTO, John A. Squires, has personally ordered his organization to take another look at Nintendo’s U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397 after he "determined that substantial new questions of patentability have arisen" (via IGN).
"The '397 patent issued with claims drawn to controlling the movement of a player character in a field of a virtual space, causing a sub character to appear in the field, controlling a battle in a manual mode when an enemy character is present in the location the sub character has appeared, and when an enemy character is not present in the location the sub character has appeared, automatically moving the sub character, and controlling a battle in an automatic mode when an enemy character is placed at a designated location."
Squires mentioned 2 older patent applications, one filed by Konami in 2002 and one by Nintendo itself in 2019, as "prior art" references, which would be "important in deciding whether the claims are patentable" and which raise "a substantial new question of patentability."
Seems like Nintendo's elaborate plan has started to unravel. Not long ago, one of its monster-capture patent applications was rejected in Japan because it "lacked an inventive step."
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