The Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Jon A. Squires, has ordered a re-examination of a patent issued to Nintendo in September 2025. The document concerns a game mechanic that allows a player to summon another character and have them fight on their behalf—a classic example from the Pokémon series, where the player summons Pokémon to battle.
In the order, the director stated that "serious questions of patentability have arisen" based on the Yabe patents (issued to Konami in 2002) and Taura (issued to Nintendo in 2020). Both describe a character that fights alongside the player in manual or simplified automatic mode.
Squires noted that the USPTO examiner, when issuing the 2025 patent, cited the absence of a similar patent, seemingly disregarding Yabe and Taura.
It is noted that the USPTO director personally initiating a re-examination without the involvement of another company is extremely rare—the last time this happened was in 2012.