the lawsuit is targeting three patents in particular. These primarily cover throwing an object in a specific direction to either summon a battle character or to capture a creature in the field
Better watch out, Ghostbusters. Your ghost trap might be next.
No they specifically only target companies that cannot defend themselves. World of Warcraft has battle pets that you can capture by throwing cages at them and then train and fight them against other battle pets. Nintendo isn't about to file a lawsuit against Microsoft.
Not a lawyer, but it seems like changing the ball throwing mechanic is an admission that they are taking ideas from Nintendo. Maybe they are trying to minimize the damage but still seems like they are weakening their position.
Honestly this whole thing is gonna set precedence and simple game mechanics are gonna get copyrighted in ways that will only make gaming as a whole even worse than it already is.