It appears as if The Pokémon Company really isn't a fan of competition, as it has recently acquired a patent which would cover the gameplay mechanic of summoning a character and letting it fight another character. Essentially, this covers the main battling mechanics of the Pokémon games, with your pocket monsters being summoned in order to take down the critters other trainers bring along.
As reported by Games Fray, this could obviously have a wider impact on a lot of games. Palworld is the most obvious example, as the creators of the game are currently locked in a legal battle with The Pokémon Company over alleged copyright infringement. Granted, it's worth noting that TPC applied for this patent back in March 2023, and achieved it without any hiccups.
The new patent covers characters summoning sub-characters to fight for them or just characters summoning sub-characters in spaces with no enemies to fight, alongside things like automatic battles being triggered by characters walking in the direction of other characters. It sounds like mechanics we see in a lot of games, so it'll be intriguing to see how vehemently Pokémon pursues other similar creature battlers now it has acquired this patent.