Nintendo Nintendo now has a US patent on summoning characters and making them battle for you

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Nintendo isn’t slowing down in its legal crusade against Palworld. While the patent infringement case against Pocketpair continues in Japan, the real story may be unfolding in the U.S.

As we’ve covered before, Nintendo isn’t just fighting one lawsuit. It's been quietly stockpiling patents and preparing for a potential American case, too. And the latest one is a big deal. The newest patent is particularly egregious and could have massive implications for the entire games industry.

Last week, Nintendo quietly secured a U.S. patent that, on paper, gives it ownership over one of the most common mechanics in gaming: summoning a character and having it fight another.

The Patent '397 covers the fundamental mechanics of summoning a character to have it fight another. So yes, sounds like Pokémon. However, it also describes things that many other games do.

Unlike many patents, which often face heavy scrutiny or rejections before they’re approved, this one glided through the U.S. Patent Office without objections. It was filed in March 2023 and granted just last week.

Patent '397 is potentially explosive for the gaming industry, because it isn't just about Palworld. If a game does all of the following, it could be challenged.

• There must be a PC, console or other computing device and the game is stored on a drive or similar storage medium.
• You can move your main character in a virtual space.
• You can summon a secondary character (called the “sub character” in the patent).
• If there’s an enemy present, the summoned character fights it (either automatically or based on your input.)
• If there isn’t, the summoned character can still move and fight when it encounters an enemy later.

If a game does those things, Nintendo now has a patent that could be used to argue infringement. I'm sure you can think of 100s of games that do this. This isn’t just a Pokémon thing. The patent language is so broad that it could arguably apply to mechanics across RPGs, action games, MMOs, and the list goes on.

I wonder if they’ll try to get Megaten and Dragon Quest who had this mechanic years before Pokémon and served as inspiration.

Nintendo is EVERY pejorative in the dictionary! Enough said!

So are they going to try and go after Digimon next? This is quite asinine IMO. Monster collecting games have been around longer than Pokemon has, I can somewhat understand going after Palworld if they had a patent for using spheres to catch creatures before the game was release but this? I am not a fan of Nintendo as a company because of things like this.

It's a really low blow from Nintendo. Nintendo did not invent the summoning mechanics in games, Dungeons & Dragons was the first game with the summoning mechanic I believe and as a computer game, Pool Of Radiance in the 1980s. Then FF, Digimon and Pokemon helped make summoning stuff famous in video games. The US Patent Office is also to blame here, they should never have given the patent to Nintendo because it's too broad and Nintendo was not the one that invented the mechanics in the first place.