According to reporting by IGN, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has ordered a re-examination of Nintendo’s controversial patent covering the mechanic of “summoning a character and letting it fight” in the Pokémon Scarlet and Violet series (U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397).

In the past, this patent was sharply criticised by intellectual-property lawyers — for example, the patent broadly covers gameplay in which a sub-character is summoned into a virtual space, engages in combat (either manually or automatically) when placed near an enemy, and moves automatically when no enemy is present.
However, critics argue the mechanic isn’t unique — many games, such as Digimon Story, Persona 5, and even Elden Ring, already incorporate similar systems of summoning or companion automatic combat.

Specifically, the patent’s key claims involve:

• controlling a player character’s movement within a virtual-space field;
• causing a “sub-character” to appear based on a first operation input;
• When an enemy character is present at the sub-character’s appearance location, the battle is controlled by a first (manual) mode;
• when no enemy is present, automatically controlling the sub-character’s movement;
• When an enemy character is positioned in a designated location, the battle is controlled via a second (automatic) mode.

  The USPTO’s director, John A. Squires, signalled that two earlier U.S. patent applications — one by Konami in 2002, and another by Nintendo in 2019 — may count as “prior art” relevant to assessing whether the current claims are truly novel, and stated that “significant new questions of patentability” exist.

Legal commentators say this move was triggered partly by “strong public dissatisfaction” with how easily the patent had been approved, and concerns about the integrity of the U.S. patent system when applied to video games.

Moreover, the re-examination comes at a delicate time: Nintendo is currently engaged in legal proceedings with the makers of Palworld over alleged patent infringement, and the weakening of this patent could undermine Nintendo’s leverage.

If Nintendo is required to respond within two months by the USPTO order, and if the re-examination results in revocation of key claims, it could signal trouble not just for Nintendo’s case but for how gameplay mechanics are protected more broadly in the industry.

The above content is compiled by ModeZone, a fashion and entertainment magazine.