Nintendo’s legal team continues to be hard at work in its battle against Palworld and its patent infringement lawsuit against developer Pocketpair in Japan, which claims that the survival sandbox copied a variety of game mechanics from the Pokemon franchise, while also attempting to secure additional patents in the U.S. for a possible similar legal action in our part of the world.

That presumption just got a bit stronger as Nintendo was granted two new patents in the U.S.: one that secures the “smooth switching of riding objects” and another that patents the act of summoning a character or creature to fight another entity in games.

While the first patent is arguably already moot from a legal standpoint thanks to earlier mechanical changes made to Palworld, it’s that second patent that could cause bigger waves to more than just the critter catching survivalbox, as GamesFray notes that the definition of the patented mechanics is broad enough that every game that features summoned NPCs used to fight other NPCs could become the target of Nintendo’s legal ire, which is ridiculous, to say the least.

Of course, it’s up to Nintendo to leverage this new legal weapon or not, and as noted before, most of this appears to be about directly steamrolling Palworld, so it seems unlikely that Nintendo is going to come for all the games that have added “summoned pets” as a skill since the ’90s. But it is a worrying development for the games industry at large, especially for smaller studios that may now have to consider painting a target on their backs because they want to make a game about summoned things fighting enemies. Obviously, this story continues.