Federal court bars Australian company from releasing unsanctioned Pokemon-branded NFTs | Pokémon
The owners of the Pokemon brand hired private investigators to track down the Australian developers behind a crypto-based online game that uses its characters without the Japanese company’s permission.
The Pokémon Company International (TPCI) won orders in the Federal Court on Wednesday preventing Parramatta-based developer Kotiota from using the popular video game, film and TV characters in its software, issuing Pokémon-branded non-fungible tokens, or representing that the company has a relationship with The Pokémon Company International.
TPCI was alerted to Kotiota posing as a Pokémon game developer in August this year, when news outlets said they had received legal letters from Kotiota claiming that articles about games should name Kotiota as a Pokémon developer despite has no agreement with TPCI, the court heard.
Kotiota has represented on its website that it worked on a number of Pokémon games, including the game’s most recent releases, Pokémon Violet and Pokémon Scarlet, which TPCI has said Kotiota did not work on.
In November, TPCI became aware of a website called PokeWorld that was registered by Xiaoyan Liu, who heads Kotiota. The site announced plans to launch a crypto-based game and NFTs in January next year.
TPCI was particularly concerned about the launch of NFTs because, according to documents, Nintendo and TPCI had made a “conscious decision” not to enter the world of NFTs.
As part of the statement given to the court, TPCI’s representative, Katherine Fang, had to explain the history of Pokémon and its characters, including Pikachu, Bulbasaur, Charmander and Squirtle. The ruling identifies Pikachu as the “most recognizable” of the characters, and includes an illustration and rules around how Pikachu should be presented.
“Fang denied that TPCI was particularly concerned with ensuring that Pikachu was not represented in any way that impinged on Pikachu’s visible facial features, or in any way impeded the ability to see the facial expressions,” the ruling said.
The court heard that in the company’s investigation, they discovered that another agency had obtained what purported to be a license agreement between TPCI and Kotiota, but which actually had a forged seal of a TPCI officer.
In initial attempts to stop Kotiota’s use of Pokémon, TPCI hired a cyber security firm to locate Kotiota’s offices in Parramatta, but were unable to find anyone in the building.
Accepting that TCPI had attempted to serve the documents in a meaningful manner, the court ordered Kotiota to stop using the Pokémon mark and stop presenting itself as a developer of the games.
As the defendant in the case did not participate in the hearing, legal costs were reserved.
Guardian Australia has sought comment from Kotiota.
