Nintendo's "VIRTUAL BOY" trademark application has been refuted: There are already similar patents!

　　The application for registration of "VIRTUAL BOY" by Nintendo in the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was recently officially rejected. The application was proposed on November 14, 2024 based on Japanese domestic registration and clearly designated for the category of "head-mounted display devices", but the USPTO rejected it on the grounds of "the existence of an approximate trademark" in its review on May 30.

According to official documents, the main reason for the rejection is that 2N2VR LLC has registered the "THE VIRTUAL BOYS" trademark in 2019 for online game live broadcast services. Although Nintendo applied for a hardware product category, the examiners believed that the two trademarks were highly pronounced and visually similar, which could lead consumers to confuse the source of the product.

　This trademark dispute has triggered a new round of speculation in the industry about Nintendo's VR layout. Looking back on history, Nintendo launched Virtual Boy in 1995 caused headaches and dizziness to users due to technical defects. In the end, only 770,000 units were sold and then delisted, becoming one of the company's most failed hardware products. The Labo VR package launched in 2019 also received a mediocre market response.

　　It should be noted that in 2024, Nintendo disclosed a patented technology for Switch2 supporting VR headsets, which adopts a simple design similar to Google Cardboard, but no commercialization plans have been announced so far.