Pokemon Company takes NFT game to court

The Pokemon Company International is taking an Australian NFT game developer to court over its use of Pokemon characters

The Pokemon Company International has taken legal action against an Australian NFT game developer over what it claims is an unauthorised use of Pokemon characters.

As reported by Australian gaming news website Vooks, documents released by the Federal Court of Australia have revealed that The Pokemon Company International (TPCI) has taken action against the developer, who confusingly goes by Pokemon Pty Ltd (PPL).

TPCI alleges that PPL, which is also known as Kotiota Studios, advertised an NFT-focused game including Pokemon characters, including Pikachu, Bulbasaur, and Eevee. TPCI also claims that PPL falsely claimed to work on Pokemon games, including Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, Pokemon Home, and Pokemon Sleep, which has not yet been released.

Kotiota Studios’ website claims that the company is “one of The Pokemon Company’s list of contractor partners”, and that it “is involved in open-world game design and animation” for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, among other games. TPCI stressed in its application to the court that neither of these things are true.

The PokeWorld website is still online, and shows a host of Pokemon. Picture: Kotoita Studios

The main concern for TPCI is PPL’s advertising of an apparent game called PokeWorld, which uses Pokemon and will allegedly offer players NFTs, or non-fungible tokens. NFTs are digital tokens that are minted on a blockchain, which is a digital ledger that can’t be changed once written to. They’re largely considered controversial, because they’ve traditionally used a lot of energy to process and because they’re seen as solving very few problems with their implementation.

Notably, a lawyer representing TPCI said that “The Pokemon Company and Nintendo had made a deliberate decision not to launch any Pokemon NFTs”, suggesting that the company considered it at some stage, but made the decision not to go down that path.

PPL, operating as Kotiota, also reportedly sent emails to certain members of the press attempting to get coverage on PokeWorld, and allegedly claimed in those emails that it was affiliated with TPCI and that the project was officially licensed. TPCI denied that it had any kind of professional affiliation with PPL.

PPL claims to have worked on Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, which The Pokemon Company denies. Picture: Nintendo

According to the court documents, PPL did not attend the hearing which took place on December 21. As reported by The Guardian, the court ordered that PPL and Kotiota Studios stop using Pokemon assets in its software, using the Pokemon name, or any of its characters, in advertising, or “representing that the company has a relationship” with TPCI.

In other Pokemon news, it was recently revealed that the Pokemon animated series would be saying goodbye to Ash Ketchum. Ash and his Pikachu have been the primary characters in the animated series’ 25 years on air, and a new female protagonist will take over starting in the next season.

Nintendo also had to promise to fix the new Pokemon games, Scarlet and Violet, after fans complained about a host of bugs, glitches, and performance issues present in the games.

Written by Oliver Brandt on behalf of GLHF.