On May 21, 2020, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled in the matter of Barbaro Technologies, LLC v Niantic, Inc. a patent Barbaro attempted to enforce against Pokémon Go developer Niantic was invalid under Section 101 of the Patent Act.
The patent related to “integrating real world location data into a three-dimensional virtual thematic environment.” The Court found that the patent did not specify the method of integrating location data with a 3D environment, and did not improve on any existing technologies used to achieve the result.
