Videogame patent lawyer: Nintendo has exposed itself in a major way with its Palworld suit.

When Nintendo announced that it was suing Pocketpair, the developer of Palworld, last week, it sparked immediate discussions about how Pocketpair might fare in court. Kirk Sigmon, IP lawyer and videogames patent expert, says that despite Nintendo's recent years of intellectual property warfare, its success in its Palworld suit is far from certain. Sigmon claims that by suing Pocketpair Nintendo could lose its patent.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Sigmon discussed videogame patents, and the Palworld case. He said that drafting a filing for a patent is a delicate balancing, especially if it's a design patent.

"Your job is to find the delicate balance between being too narrow - allowing others to copy your idea freely because you have described it so narrowly - and being too broad," Sigmon explained. "If you are too broad, you give them the opportunity to get rid of the patent, because you have given them a way to prove that your idea was already in existence."

Sigmon believes that some of the claims in the patents, which are widely believed to be the basis for Nintendo's lawsuit, are too broad. "I mean, [this part of Nintendo's patent] can be found easily: 'Control a character in a virtual environment based on input'. "I could make any videogame with that alone," Sigmon said.

Sigmon said that Nintendo is playing with fire by bringing a lawsuit based on claims that are too broad. Patent laws in the US and Japan have mechanisms to invalidate patents that are leveled at you. If Pocketpair can prove that the claims of Nintendo's patents were demonstrated in prior art - meaning similar design elements existed in other games - then Nintendo would not just lose its suit. It could lose the patent.

"Because it's written so broadly, even in Japanese you can be clever about which games you're referring to as prior art or what references you're referring to," Sigmon said. You'd be surprised at how often you could make these arguments. They've exposed their true selves in a big manner."