The US Patent and Trademark Office has revoked a patent jointly held by Nintendo and The Pokemon Company covering the act of summoning a creature to fight on your behalf. Patent number 12,403,397, granted in September 2025, has been shot down as too "obvious" to hold up, though the ruling is non-final and Nintendo has two months to respond.
What the USPTO actually found
The examiner cited four pieces of prior art to make the "obviousness" case: a 2002 patent from Konami, a 2019 patent from Bandai Namco, and two 2020 patents from Nintendo itself. That last part is worth sitting with for a second. Nintendo's own earlier patents are being used to argue that Nintendo's newer patent claims nothing inventive.
What makes this ruling particularly interesting, as legal analyst Florian Mueller noted for games fray, is that the USPTO did not look at real-world games at any point during this process, either when granting the patent or when revoking it. For 18 of the 26 patent claims, examiners had to combine two separate prior art references to argue obviousness. For the remaining 8 claims, they needed to combine three. That layered approach gives Nintendo room to argue that a working game developer wouldn't naturally have combined those references in the first place.
danger
This is a non-final rejection. Nintendo has two months to respond, and can request an extension. The patent is not permanently dead yet.
The 26 claims and what's at stake
Here's the thing: the USPTO offered two alternative theories for each of the 26 patent claims. That means Nintendo would need to knock down both arguments for any single claim to survive. But if even one claim makes it through intact, Nintendo could potentially use it as the basis for future infringement suits.
The company's legal team will almost certainly try to preserve as many of those 26 claims as possible. More surviving claims means more legal leverage, which matters a lot given the broader context of Nintendo's ongoing battles over Pokemon-adjacent mechanics.
Patent 12,403,397 under review
How this fits into the bigger picture
This patent is separate from the ones Nintendo cited when it sued Palworld developer Pocketpair back in 2024, a case that is still ongoing. Those patents focus on creature capturing and riding mechanics. Patent 12,403,397 is specifically about summoning a creature to battle in one of two modes, a narrower but still sweeping claim that drew criticism from the moment it was granted.
Even The Pokemon Company's former chief legal officer publicly stated they expected the patent to be unenforceable. The USPTO's November 2025 decision to call for a reexamination signaled early skepticism, and the current revocation follows that trajectory.
The key here is that this revocation, while significant, is procedural rather than final. Nintendo has fought back against patent challenges before, and with 26 claims each carrying two alternative rejection theories, there's genuine legal complexity to work through. For developers building creature-battling games, the outcome of Nintendo's response in the next two months will matter considerably.
Keep an eye on the official Pokemon news page for any statements from The Pokemon Company's side, and check out the latest gaming news for continued coverage as this case develops. Make sure to check out more:
