Pokemon “Summon” Patent To Be Reexamined Under New USPTO Boss’ Orders

Nintendo’s litigation against Palworld developer Pocketpair is becoming increasingly complicated by the day, with one recent patent granted to the Pokemon franchise now under review by the United States.

According to a new Games Fray report, the new head of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), John A. Squires, has ordered a reexamination of Nintendo’s Patent No. 12,403,397. Filed in January 2023, granted to Nintendo in September 2025, and dubbed the ‘397 patent, the listing is oftentimes oversimplified to “summoning characters and making them fight.” It’s for this reason that Squires’s office is seeking to determine if such a feature is even patentable.

“I have determined that substantial new questions of patentability have arisen as to claims 1, 13, 25, and 26 of U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397 B2 (the ‘397 patent’),” Squires wrote in his order, citing two older applications filed by Konami in 2002 (Yabe) and Nintendo in 2019 (Taura) as justification for the patent’s reexamination. “Thus, a reasonable examiner would consider each of Yabe and Taura to be important in deciding whether the claims are patentable, and Yabe and Taura each raise a substantial new question of patentability. I hereby order [the] reexamination of the ‘397 patent.”

Konami’s Yabe patent revolves around a sub-character battling with you either automatically or manually. Nintendo’s Taura patent refers to the same thing.

So, in Squires’s view, Nintendo’s ‘397 patent doesn’t constitute the “prior art” argument the company put forth against Palworld because games that came out before the patent was filed and awarded contradict that. The “summon character and let it fight” mechanic is an oversimplification of the patent’s language, with The Verge describing it as closer to Pokemon Scarlet and Violet’s “auto-battling” system. However, with other games like the Digimon franchise, the Persona series, and even Elden Ring letting you summon characters that fight alongside you, Squires wants to relitigate what exactly is patentable in the first place.

Nintendo has two months to respond to the USPTO’s order. Games Fray believes there may not be any more legal developments this year, but decisions are expected to be made next year, with presiding judge and leader of Tokyo District Court’s patent division, Motoyuki Nakashima, being closely watched for a ruling.