Nintendo has reportedly suffered a setback after Japan’s Patent Office rejected one of its Pokémon-related patent applications.
The patent covered touchscreen gameplay features like moving your character, throwing an item to catch creatures, sending them into battle, and choosing commands during fights.
According to the patent office, those ideas weren’t new enough.
The examiner pointed to several earlier examples, including a Pokémon fan game shown on YouTube in 2013, saying similar mechanics were already public before Nintendo filed the patent.