A Japanese analytics agency, Patent Result, has published this year's rankings of domestic game and entertainment companies by the 'strength' of patents they hold, via Automaton. Patent Result values a company's quality over quantity and the strength of the ideas being brought to the table, so the ranking is based on both "the quantity and relevance of their patents".
How do you measure that? Well, you take into account "the frequency of a given patent being cited as a basis for the rejection of another company's patent"—if one company's patent carries more weight, similar ideas are more likely to be rejected.
While Bandai Namco was in the top three last year, it has moved up past mobile game developer Gree and taken SIE's crown, leading the way with 245 patents and a score of 8,565.2—which is a significant lead.
Here are the patent scores for the top three:
- Bandai: 8,565.2
- Sony Interactive Entertainment: 6,631.0
- Gree: 5,121.9
The list is dominated by several familiar giants of the industry, such as Sega, Nintendo, and The Pokémon Company. The results are based on the year from April 1, 2024, to March 31, 2025, which includes the timeframe of The Pokémon Company's lawsuit against Palworld and Nintendo's patent filing last year. Though recently, one of Nintendo's patents was rejected for being too similar to Ark, Monster Hunter, and—ironically—Pokémon GO.
In Bandai's case, its crown jewels are its toy patents featuring technology such as toys which can react to temperature, and equipment to improve convenience for service providers. Patent Result also highlighted "high-profile" patents from SIE that include generating virtual objects in real-time on display devices, and a device that recommends sound effects for video and computer simulations based on specific features.
