You're correct that the patent (in Claim 1) does not specifically refer to throwing a Pokeball (just to "causing the sub character to appear" based on an input), but it seems to me to still be directly linked to this dynamic.

The article itself is quite low-quality (as usual with articles where the title and subheadline are quotes) and I'd go as far as assume it's probably a PR piece placed by another player in the space.