The Pokémon Company is taking the Australian crypto company to court over the Pokémon NFT game
Documents filed in the Federal Court of Australia have revealed that The Pokémon Company International is taking Pokémon Pty Ltd to court over advertising for a new NFT-based Pokémon mobile game. No Pokémon is not suing itself, but instead Pokémon Pty Ltd is an Australian company that created and advertised a website claiming to launch a crypto game called PokéWorld, under the name Kotiota Studios.
Not only that, they have claimed to have worked on other Pokémon games, including Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Pokémon Home and even the unreleased Pokémon Sleep. The Pokémon Company International points out in the legal documents that it is not a contractor for them.
The site for the game PokeWorld is still available (which we don’t link to). Pokémon Company International has asked the court to seek an injunction to stop Pokémon Pty Ltd from using their trademarks on its website and social media, not to launch the game or sell any NFTs using their IP.
The lawyer for TPCi also specifically pointed out that “TPCi, The Pokémon Company and Nintendo had made a conscious decision not to release any Pokémon NFTs”.
The PokeWorld website announces a new game “brought to you by The Pokémon Company International and Kotiota“. I understand that Kotiota Studios (Kotiota) is an entity associated with the respondents in their business which is the subject of these proceedings. On that website there is a section entitled “2022-2023 ROADMAP” which appears to outline the timeline for the launch of PokeWorld and the release of non-fungible tokens (NFT) related to Pokémon characters, a review of that website indicates that the PokeWorld game will launch in January 2023.
The Kotiota Studios team was even bold enough to reach out to media sites to try and drum up interest in their game, and this is how TPCi was tipped off. The first application to the court was just on December 19, 2022, with the first hearing on December 21, 2022. The legal counsel for The Pokémon Company International appeared. However, no one from Kotiota Studios did.
There’s not much for them to do, obviously, The Pokémon Company International owns the rights to Pokémon, and the other company doesn’t. At this stage Pokémon Pty Ltd must stop everything they are doing including advertising the game. The court says that TPCi has a strong case and wants more information before costs or damages can be raised. If they do not respond, further legal action may be taken.
We will keep you updated.
