What the USPTO patent rejection of Nintendo's Summon and Fight patent means for PalWorld and other games

In a significant – though not yet truly decisive – development in the ongoing Nintendo vs. PalWorld saga, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has issued a non-definitive rejection of the 'Summon and Fight' patent granted to Nintendo in September 2025. The patent, which covers game mechanics involving summoning a secondary character into battle, has been under fire from the gaming industry almost since it was granted. Now, a USPTO examiner has tentatively agreed with the critics and pushed back its previous approval, a meaningful step in the PalWorldfavor.

It's a no-brainer for a number of reasons: this patent isn't in the same courts as the actual legal battle, it's one of many patents involved, and Nintendo retains the right to respond, amend, and appeal. But the decision confirms widespread concerns among many legal experts and observers that the patent was granted too broadly and with too little scrutiny. The jury is still out, but this overarching development may help shift the tone of the entire case.

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What does the patent actually cover?

To know what rejection actually means PalWorld and games like it, it's important to delve into it because the formal title of the patent (Patent US12403397B2) — “Storage medium, information processing system, information processing device, and game processing method” — doesn't say much, and all that's involved in this case is a confusing mix of legal language in two different languages. The heart of Nintendo's patent's core claim is more straightforward: it covers specific in-game technical implementations that allow the player to summon a companion creature (the patent calls it a “sub-character”), which then engages an enemy through one of two distinct modes:

Manual Mode: If the enemy is already at the summoning location, the battle continues under the player's control.
Auto Mode: If there is no enemy in the immediate vicinity, the sub-character will move in the direction specified by the player and will automatically start a battle if it encounters them.

It's intentionally ambiguous, but to be clear, this could basically apply to any game where you drop a companion creature and then it fights something. The problem is that several intellectual property law experts have expressed concern that the claim's ambiguous language makes it Nintendo's patent applicable to a wide range of video games. PalWorld may be the most obvious example, but also games like Elden Ring could technically fall into the same range if enough pressure was applied, legally speaking.

How Nintendo got to this point

For context, Nintendo filed this request in March 2023 and was approved in September 2025 with a cleaner-than-average prosecution history: the claims were never dismissed or amended during the initial investigation, which experts called unusual. Industry observers were quick to point out the extensive prior art on forums and Reddit — games that have been doing this sort of thing for decades — and legal commentators were blunt in their criticism. Patent analyst Florian Mueller called the case at large “a clear case of bullying”.

The volume of criticism was loud enough that in November 2025 the Director of the USPTO ordered an ex parte examination (in the absence of one party) of the patent examination, and by March 2026 the examiner had issued a 104-page complaint to the Office that rejected all 26 claims in the patent. The disclaimer combined four references to prior art—from Konami, Bandai Namco, and Nintendo—alone to make it clear. Obviousness, in this case, is a legal ground that prevents the patenting of inventions that would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill in the art at the time of filing.

What does “Non-Final” actually mean?

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Although this rejection sounds like a milestone that stands at first glance, the infinite rejection is essentially the first draft of the decision. Nintendo has two months (minimum) to respond and fix, but the practical trade-off Nintendo faces with this rejection is real. Modifying the claims to survive rejection likely means sacrificing the broad scope that made the patent so controversial and so meaningful in its expanding battle against PalWorld the developer of Pocketpair in the first place.

Larger Image: Nintendo's Japan and US portfolio

To be clear, immediate PalWorld the lawsuit is a Japanese case filed in the Tokyo District Court in September 2024. All of these USPTO matters have no direct legal relevance to this proceeding, but are not directly related to the case in Japan. Nintendo's difficulties with the UPTSO stem from a proactive move to build a parallel US patent portfolio with several fast-track US patents at the end of 2024 that match the Japanese patents at issue in PalWorld suit. This would set the stage for a US lawsuit if Nintendo chooses to proceed.

So, while not affecting the actual case, the USPTO's review calls into question the credibility of Nintendo's entire US patent enforcement strategy. Especially since the Japan Patent Office also separately issued an open-ended rejection of a related Japanese application (No. 2024-031879) — the parent of the two asserted “monster capture” patents — citing the games as ARK: Survival Evolved and Monster Hunter as the current state of the art. The JPO's rejection isn't immediately binding either, but Pocketpair will likely cite both of those decisions when it argues against Nintendo's lawsuit, and judges may note how two separate patent offices treat the same basic mechanics.

What Nintendo's patent rejection means for the industry

In the short term, this is a public relations win for Pocketpair, a developer that has already proactively changed PalWorld's mechanic after Nintendo's Japanese suit was filed, removing the ability to ride companions for gliding and replacing it with a separate tool. It provides a public, official source that supports the argument that Nintendo's game mechanics patents are too broad and poorly researched. In the longer term, the case may be critical in setting the tone; a review ordered by the Director of the USPTO resulting in the rejection of all claims—based on obviousness—sends a message.

The battle with Pocketpair in the Japanese courts remains unresolved. For Nintendo specifically, the pressure is now to either defend the claims as written, an uphill battle given the examiner's thoroughness, or accept watered-down versions that carry less enforcement weight. The legal battle has already had real effects on game design, regardless of how the patents are ultimately resolved.