Microsoft thought they owned Donkey Kong

[Jaywood2010]

ethomaz said:

Mr Khan said:
Well, there was a lot of doubt at the time. I seem to remember the prevailing belief for a long time being that Diddy, Cranky, Dixie, King K. Rool, et al were all Microsoft's property, and that they could freely make Kong Country games or at least prevent Nintendo from using any of those characters ever again (it wasn't, i think, until Mario Power Tennis that Diddy Kong appeared in a Nintendo game after the acquisition, after all)

I thought Donkey Kong and everything related were always Nintendo IP... I didn't know there were some kind of confusion at that time.

Well Donkey Kong appeared in a game 1st with Mario jumping over the barrels.  Diddy, Dixie, etc was all created with Rare as the developers as far as I am aware.  So yes confusion would definitely take place.