In a significant blow to Nintendo’s IP enforcement strategy, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has rejected the company’s controversial Pokémon ‘summon and fight’ patent in a non-final ruling. The decision validates what IP lawyers had been saying for months: this patent should never have been granted in the first place.
What Nintendo’s Pokémon ‘Summon and Fight’ Patent Actually Claimed
US Patent No. 12,433,397, granted to Nintendo and The Pokémon Company in 2025, attempted to cover the mechanic of summoning a sub-character — read: a Pokémon — to battle in a specific gameplay mode. In plain terms, it was essentially a patent on the core loop that has defined Pokémon games for nearly three decades: throw a ball, creature fights, catch more creatures.
IP experts were quick to point out that this mechanic is foundational to dozens of games well beyond Pokémon. Persona, Digimon, and even Elden Ring — depending on how broadly you read the claims — could theoretically fall within its scope. As IP expert Florian Mueller stated on social media, Nintendo “should never” have received this patent, while video game patent lawyer Kirk Sigmon told PC Gamer that “these claims were in no way allowable.”
The backlash was significant enough that in November 2025, USPTO Director John A. Squires took the rare step of ordering a director-initiated reexamination — the first of its kind since 2012, and one that didn’t require a third-party challenge to trigger.
Why the USPTO Rejected Nintendo’s Patent: Prior Art and Obviousness
According to reporting by Games Fray, the USPTO examiner rejected all 26 claims in the April 2026 ruling. The grounds: prior art, meaning the mechanic had already been documented in earlier published US patent applications before Nintendo filed.
Of those 26 claims, 18 were deemed obvious combinations of two prior art references, while the remaining 8 were rejected as obvious combinations of three references. Remarkably, two of those prior art applications were filed by Nintendo itself, with one each from Konami and Bandai Namco rounding out the evidence.
It’s worth noting the USPTO relied solely on published patent applications as prior art, not on actual games — a nuance Florian Mueller highlighted as complicating the obviousness arguments. Still, the result is unambiguous: all claims rejected.
What This Means for the Palworld Lawsuit Against Pocketpair
Here’s where things get interesting — and slightly complicated. This particular US patent is not one of the patents Nintendo cited in its September 2024 lawsuit against Pocketpair, the developer behind Palworld, in Japan. That ongoing case centres on three Japanese patents related to creature capture, release, and riding mechanics — distinct from this summoning patent.
Even so, the USPTO ruling carries symbolic weight. It signals that broadly written gameplay mechanic patents — the kind Nintendo deployed to go after Pocketpair — face real scrutiny. The Japanese lawsuit has gone quiet since October last year, and Pocketpair has already made significant changes to Palworld’s mechanics in response to the pressure, including removing the ability to summon Pals by throwing Poké Ball-style Pal Spheres.
Critically, this rejection is non-final. Nintendo has a two-month window — extendable — to respond by amending its claims or arguing against the rejection. It could also appeal to the Federal Circuit Court. Even salvaging a single narrowed claim could give Nintendo some enforcement leverage, so this fight is far from over.
What the USPTO Decision Means for Game Mechanic Patents Broadly
Beyond the Nintendo-Palworld saga, this ruling has sent a quiet cheer through the indie development community. The fear that a company could patent fundamental genre mechanics — summoning, capturing, commanding creatures — and then weaponise those patents against competitors has long been a concern for smaller studios.
Games built on monster-taming loops, turn-based party combat, or creature collection — genres with deep roots stretching back well before Pokémon — now have a clearer precedent that such broad claims won’t automatically hold up to scrutiny. The USPTO’s willingness to act on its own initiative here, without a third-party request, is also a meaningful signal about how the office is rethinking its approach to gaming IP.
Nintendo does hold other Pokémon-related US patents that have withstood similar criticism, so this isn’t a wholesale dismantling of its IP position — but it does mark a notable crack in a strategy that had already drawn significant industry pushback.
GamesHub will continue monitoring both the USPTO reexamination process and the parallel Japanese proceedings as developments emerge. The next key moment will be Nintendo’s formal response to the rejection, due within the coming months.
