The US Patent Office has revoked Nintendo's patent on the character summoning game mechanic, which was issued to the company last year. It concerns a system in which a player can summon an ally and make them fight on their behalf — a mechanic familiar from, for example, the Pokémon series.
The patent was issued in September 2025, but just two months later, the director of the office, John Squires, initiated a re-examination — the first time since 2012 that such a decision was made personally by the head of the office without an official complaint from another company. The reason was doubts about the novelty of the development in light of existing patents.
As a result, the office rejected all 26 points of the patent, effectively nullifying it. However, this decision is not yet final: Nintendo has two months to respond, the option to request an extension, and the right to appeal.
During the re-examination, earlier patents were considered, including developments by Konami (Yabe patent from 2002), Nintendo itself (Taura patents from 2020 and Motokura from 2022), as well as Bandai Namco (Shimomoto patent from 2020). The office concluded that the combination of these solutions invalidates all claimed elements of the new patent.