The absurd NFT project was just taken to court by Pokémon

The Pokémon Company International (TPCi) works pretty hard to keep its monsters in the right pens, fervently beating down any attempt to use pocket pets without a licensing agreement in place. Just a few months ago we saw the company going after six Chinese firms who had crossed the border with their own Pokémon-like, and now they are back in court with a new goal. Except this time it’s NFTs, the digital JPG cryptocurrencies pretend to own.

Australian side Vooks noticed papers filed in the Federal Court of Australia, which show that The Pokémon Company is taking action against a company called, amazingly, Pokémon Pty Ltd, which claimed to create a mobile game called PokéWorld. Because when it comes to crypto, there is no bottom for stupid.

Pokemon Pty Ltd, apparently based in Melbourne, was registered as a company in 2016and appears to be operating under the name Kotiota Studios. All of these entities, according to the court papers, boil down to one person, Xiaoyan Liu. Kotiota, who does not appear to exist at the address provided, then created a website for PokéWorld, a puny mobile game where you battle Pokémon like Charmander and Pikachu to win “$POKESHARD” currency, linked to Etherium. Of course, all the items you buy in the game are minted as NFTs, so anyone can trade them down to their core value of zero.

Vooks reports that the company then rude sent out press releases to gaming sites, while making ridiculous claims of working with TPCi to produce their NFT garbage. On NFTCalendar, it is claimed that “the first Pokemon P2E NFT collection brought to you by The Pokemon Company International and Kotiota: brings the spirit of 2000s nostalgia to WEB3.” On the game’s website, this amazing lie appears:

While The Twitter account has been suspended, the the game’s website is still online, which is bold of them considering the trial. It’s full of Pokémon characters, even including animated videos, showing the obnoxiously shiny 3D monsters limply firing attacks at each other against a 2D backdrop.

However, the entire project is wonderful to examine. Given the repeated claims that TPCi is involved, it doesn’t even try to hide the complete cancellation of a world-famous IP, just giving the page to the most famous characters from the franchise. What was the plan; how did they see themselves getting away with this? That reminds me the group that thought they could create originals Dune works and NFTs because they had bought a copy of a bookbut somehow even dumber.

Regardless, the group has now been ordered by a court to immediately stop suggesting it has any rights to develop Pokémon game, stop using Pokémon properties, and especially to no longer claim that its Pokémon NFTs have something to do with TPCi.

The court papers say that The Pokémon Company became aware of this project in November this year, hired a cybercrime investigation team to look into it, and then tried to deliver papers to Xiaoyan Liu or the companies involved, but failed. The ruling was made without any response from Kotiota, Liu or Pokémon Pty Ltd. The court has asked for more details before it is willing to decide on compensation, but has made it absolutely clear who is right here.

It’s worth noting that, oddly enough, this isn’t the only “PokéWorld” in existence. It is a completely different NFT grift using the same name, even though the site is dead and The Twitter account Haven’t updated since last November. And then, something more legal, that’s it a very popular one Rimworld courage called PokéWorldjust makes it more confusing to pick this all apart.

We’ve contacted Pokémon Pty Ltd and Kotiota, and really hope that everyone involved responds, because they would fascinating to find out where else they might have thought this was going.