Amid Palworld Lawsuit, Nintendo Patents a System for Summoning a Character
Description
Nintendo has obtained a patent describing a patent for summoning a character for the purpose of having it fight another character. The broad nature of the patent, secured amid Nintendo‘s high-profile IP battle against Palworld, potentially threatens the entire video game industry, according to one analyst.
In September 2024, The Pokemon Company and Nintendo jointly sued Palworld developer Pocketpair, alleging that the studio’s game violates three of their patents. The patents at the center of the case describe creature-capture and ride-switching systems. While the lawsuit was only filed in Japan, Nintendo has separately been moving to secure similar patents in the United States, signaling that the case could eventually go global.
Nintendo Secures Patent for Summoning Characters to Battle
On September 2, the Japanese gaming giant was issued a U.S. patent that covers a somewhat broad implementation of a system for summoning characters into battle. Identified by patent number 12,403,397, the grant was initially spotted by Games Fray‘s patent analyst Florian Mueller, who described it as “not merely annoying but actually shocking” in how it potentially threatens the creativity of the entire video game industry.
What Exactly Does Nintendo’s Latest Patent Cover?
The new Nintendo patent covers a system that lets players move a main character, summon a separate “sub-character,” and branch into combat based on where the helper appears. If the helper is summoned onto an enemy, a player-input-driven battle begins; if not, the helper automatically moves to a player-designated direction after a second input, and combat proceeds automatically upon encountering an enemy. Because all steps mentioned in the concept—player movement, summoning, location-based branching between manual and automatic battle modes, and the second directional input—must be present, the patent appears to cover a specific combination of mechanics rather than every summoning system in general. Even so, it appears to be fairly broad.
Could Palworld Be Infringing on Nintendo’s New Patent?
Patent 12,403,397 does not appear to be directly connected to the Pocketpair case. Granted in a different jurisdiction from where Nintendo’s Palworld lawsuit is underway, its claims only partially match the features found in Palworld. Nevertheless, Mueller described it as “a fundamental threat to creativity and innovation in the games industry.” While it remains to be seen whether Nintendo will try to act on it, the sole fact that it has managed to secure the patent is “bad news” for the industry on the whole, the analyst concluded.
The ‘397 patent poses a fundamental threat to creativity and innovation in the games industry.
Separately, as of September 9, Nintendo also holds the creature-switching patent (no. 12,409,387) at the center of the Palworld lawsuit in the United States. If the company plans to sue Pocketpair over the same issue stateside, this development brings it one step closer to that goal. Earlier in 2025, Pocketpair mounted a two-pronged defense against Nintendo’s Palworld patent infringement claims, contesting the validity of the disputed patents while simultaneously arguing that its game does not infringe on them.
