Credit: AP Photo/Kamil ZihniogluIn a surprising and somewhat scary move, Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against Japanese mobile developer Colopl regarding infringements of patents. The lawsuit, which is asking for $40 million in damages from Colopl, claims among other things that the game Shiro Neko Project infringes upon Nintendo’s patents in terms of the game’s touchscreen controls. Specifically, that Shiro Neko Project uses a virtual joystick on a smartphone’s touchscreen and this is infringing on Nintendo’s control based patent for similar functionality on the Nintendo DS. Games like Shiro Neko Project are very successful in Japan, with this particular game hovering around rank 50 in the Japanese iOS grossing chart. It will be interesting to see how this develops but if Nintendo wins this lawsuit, then the ramifications of that could be immense for the Japanese mobile gaming market.

Source: Forbes January 11, 2018 17:26 UTC