For the past few years, Nintendo has been embroiled in a lawsuit against Pocketpair’s Palworld, allegeding that the monster-taming game infringed on several patents related to the Pokemon franchise.

While the Pocketpair has been forced to make a number of changes to Palworld as a result of the suit, the case overall has not been going well for Nintendo, who has had several of the patents critical to their case be rejected in the US and Japan.

In the latest update from Gamesfray, the Japanese courts have rejected another patent Nintendo filed relating to the monster catching genre. This patent was focused on mechanics for catching monsters using a touchscreen, which Nintendo had filed presumably in preparation to target an upcoming mobile version of Palworld.

The Japanese patent examiner ruled that the mechanics Nintendo was trying to patent could not be considered an “inventive step” over prior executions of the idea, which included a number of third-party titles, past Pokemon games, and a fan-game titled Pokemon Generations. Nintendo attempted to argue that the last example should not count as it infringed on Pokemon’s copyright, but the examiner rejected this argument. Gamesfray says that at this point the patent examiner is “done with this”, and Nintendo has no option but to give up or try to appeal again three months down the line.

That said, previous reports suggested that Pocketpair had successfully managed to break out of Nintendo’s hold with the Palworld 1.0 update, as Nintendo’s latest filings were only targeting older versions of the game. It seems likely that Palworld will be allowed to exist unimpeded, largely safe from potential legal takedowns from Nintendo.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.