The absurd NFT project was just taken to court by Pokemon
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 go after six Chinese firms that had crossed the line 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.
read more
Pokémon Pty Ltd, apparently based in Melbourne, was registered as a business in 2016, and appears to operate 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 so brazenly sent out press releases to gaming sites, while making ludicrous 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 game’s website is still online, which is brave of them considering the lawsuit. 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 background.
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 lifting of a world-famous IP, just giving the page with the franchise’s most famous characters. What was the plan; how did they see themselves getting away with this? It reminds me of the group that thought they could make originals Dune works and NFTs because they had bought a copy of a book, but 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 make a decision 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. There is a completely different NFT scam using the same name, although the website is dead and The Twitter account Haven’t updated since last November. And then, something more legal, there is a very popular one Rimworld courage called PokéWorldjust makes it more confusing to pick this all apart.
We have 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.
More from Kotaku
Sign up for Kotaku’s newsletter. For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
Click here to read the full article.
