A patent on summoning creatures to battle, which was granted to Nintendo and The Pokemon Company in 2025, has now been revoked. The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has declared that the patent is too obvious to stand, but importantly, this is a non-final decision. Nintendo still has the opportunity to fight back.
Notably, this is not one of the patents that Nintendo cited when it took Palworld developer Pocketpair to court back in 2024 – a legal case that is still ongoing. Those patents largely cover features like creature capturing and riding.
This patent, number 12,403,397, covers summoning a creature to do battle for you, and was granted to Nintendo and the Pokemon Company in the US in September 2025. This patent in particular proved pretty controversial, with even The Pokemon Company's former chief legal officer suspecting it would likely be unenforceable.
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In November 2025, the USPTO made a rare move in calling for patent 12,403,397 reexamined. That brings us to today's news, which is that after the reexamination, the patent has been revoked. As reported by legal analyst Florian Mueller for games fray "the rejection is non-final," and "Nintendo has two months to respond." The company could also choose to ask for an extension.
The patent was revoked because its claims were too "obvious." Four instances of prior art were cited to back up that claim, including a 2002 patent from Konami, a 2019 patent from Bandai Namco, and two 2020 patents from Nintendo itself.
Notably, these prior art examples do not include any examination into real-world games – just as no actual games were looked at before the patent was granted in the first place. "By not looking at real-world games," Mueller argues, "the USPTO is making this somewhat complicated. For 18 of the 26 patent claims, they have to combine two different prior art references to argue that the claimed inventions are obvious, and for the remaining 8 patent claims they even have to combine three to get there."
As Mueller explains, "that creates an opportunity for Nintendo to argue that a person having ordinary skill in the art (i.e., a game developer in this case) would not necessarily combine those different prior art references when looking for answers." Yet "what ups the ante for Nintendo is that for each of the 26 claims the USPTO has two alternative theories, any single one of which would be enough to take the patent down."
If any one of those 26 patent claims survived, "Nintendo could sue someone over it." The more claims that stand, the more ammunition Nintendo has to sue for infringement, and so the company's lawyers "will try to salvage as many of them as possible."
Japanese patent office casts doubt on 2 Nintendo Pokemon-catching patents in the Palworld lawsuit, saying Monster Hunter, Ark, and Pocketpair's own Craftopia all did it before.
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