The Pokémon Company is once again taking legal action against a company for the unauthorized use of its characters and other IP for a mobile game—this time involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
The Pokémon Company International is taking Australia-based Pokémon Pty Ltd to court over the use of its characters and brand in advertisements for several products listed on one of the group’s websites under the label Kotiota Studios, according to documents filed with the Federal Court of Australia, as first reported by Vooks.
On Kotiota’s website, the group was advertising PokéWorld—a pay-to-earn game that would use cryptocurrency and NFTs based on the Pokémon franchise. This, of course, was not an official product and had no ties to TPCi or the Pokémon brand.
Additionally, Kotiota lists itself as a “contractor partner” for TPC on the studio’s very poorly put-together website, which includes thrown-together GIFs of Pokémon, logos for various games, and edited images that have not been used in official promotional material for Pokémon games.
Essentially, the Australian company claims to have worked as a support studio on multiple Pokémon titles, including Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, with credits listed as simply being “involved” with animation, game, and character design. There are even credits for in-development projects like Pokémon Sleep, along with the PokéWorld NFT game and a knockoff title called Drakomon.
Vooks reports that Kotiota was reaching out to media outlets in hopes of promoting this project and on the PokéWorld website you can see the claims of it being the “first Pokémon P2E NFT collection brought to you by The Pokemon Company International and Kotiota.” You can even still find video footage of the project up too, which includes poorly animated 3D sprites of Pokémon battling and various mistakes lined in the shady marketing.
Back in August, Kotiota reached out through its legal department to Dot Esports directly expressing “strong concern” at not being listed as a developer for Pokémon HOME in a news article discussing updated functionality for the mobile app. In it, the team claimed it had “directly took part and assisted in the development and integration of the Pokémon game for mobile platforms.”
TPCi clarified in its filing that it had no connection with Kotiota nor its parent group Pokémon Pty Ltd (PPL), which should be obvious considering the group is using the Pokémon brand in its business but has never been directly mentioned in a single project. And as a result of this blatant copyright infringement and shady behavior using its IP, TPCi and its legal team opted to take the Australian group to court.
According to the filing, the first actual hearing happened on Dec. 21, with a representative from TPCi appearing in court but no one from Kotiota doing so. PPL and Kotiota director Xiaoyan Liu are directly mentioned for misleading product marketing and misuse of IP that they had no authorization to use.
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The court has noted the strong position of TPCi in this case and has essentially ordered PPL and Kotiota to cease any activity that involves the use of the Pokémon IP, including marketing and development.
Now, the court is waiting for the Australian company to respond and has labeled the request from TPCi for documents regarding misleading internal conduct, business activities, and third-party communication to minimize damages as reasonable. It appears PPL and Kotiota will have some time to respond as the court wants to “reserve costs at this stage” but the issue discovery and disclosure orders are on the table.
This also isn’t the first time TPCi has had to step in against mobile developers using its IP for blatant copyright infringement this year. It previously sued six different Chinese companies for doing so—one of which grossed over $43.4 million.
