Nintendo and Pokémon patent on summoning mechanic

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company have been granted a U.S. patent that covers the gameplay mechanic of summoning a secondary character to fight on a player’s behalf, a development that legal analysts say could reverberate across genres and complicate the developer dispute with Palworld maker Pocketpair. The patent was issued Sept. 2, 2025, and arrives amid a flurry of related filings, including a separate U.S. patent, No. 12,409,387, for seamless switching between rideable creatures that developers say Pocketpair has already worked around.

The newly issued summoning patent sets out a sequence of game behaviors in which a game stored on a device allows a player to move a character in a virtual space, cause a nonplayer or sub character to appear, and then control combat either directly or automatically depending on whether an enemy is present at the sub character’s appearance location. Analysts who reviewed the language say the description is broad enough to encompass mechanics found in many role playing, action and massively multiplayer titles.

Games industry observers have pointed to long-established mechanics in titles beyond Pokémon that could, in theory, fall within the...