The Pokémon Company is fighting in court to shut down Australian NFT scammers

The Pokémon Company is once again taking legal action against a company for unauthorized use of its characters and other IP for a mobile game – this time involving non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

Pokémon Company International is taking Australia-based Pokémon Pty Ltd to court over the use of its characters and branding in advertising for several products listed on one of the group’s websites under the label Kotiota Studios, according to documents filed with the Federal Court of Australia, as first reported by Vooks.

On Kotiota’s website, the group announced PokéWorld – a pay-to-earn game that would use cryptocurrency and NFTs based on Pokémon franchise. Of course, this was not an official product and had no ties to TPCi or Pokémon brand.

In addition, Kotiota lists itself as a “contractor partner” for TPC on the studio’s very poorly put together website, which includes throwaway GIFs of Pokémon, logos for various games, and edited images that have not been used in official promotional material for Pokémon game.

Essentially, the Australian company claims to have worked as a support studio on several Pokémon titles, incl Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, with credits listed as only “involved” with animation, gameplay, and character design. There are even credits for underdevelopment projects such as Pokemon sleepalong with the PokéWorld NFT game and a knockoff title called Dracomon.

Vooks reports that Kotiota reached out to the media in hopes of promoting this project, and on the PokéWorld website you can see the claims that it was the “first Pokémon P2E NFT Collection brought to you by The Pokemon Company International and Kotiota. You can even still find video footage of the project as well, which includes poorly animated 3D sprites of Pokemon battles and various glitches in the shady marketing.

Back in August, Kotiota through its legal department contacted Dot Esports and directly expressed “strong concern” about not being listed as a developer for Pokemon HOME in a news article discussing updated functionality for the mobile app. In it, the team claimed that they had “directly participated and assisted in the development and integration of Pokémon games for mobile platforms.”

TPCi clarified in its filing that it had no connection with Kotiota or its parent group Pokémon Pty Ltd (PPL), which should be obvious given that the group uses Pokémon brand in its operations, but has never been directly mentioned in a single project. And as a result of this blatant copyright infringement and shady behavior using their IP, TPCi and its legal team chose to take the Australian group to court.

According to the filing, the first actual hearing occurred on December 21, with a representative from TPCi appearing in court, but no one from Kotiota. PPL and Kotiota director Xiaoyan Liu are directly cited for misleading product marketing and misusing IP that they did not have permission to use.

Related: Details on cancelled Pokémon spin-off surface after almost 20 years in the dark

The court has noted TPC’s strong position in this matter and has essentially ordered PPL and Kotiota to cease any activity involving the use of Pokémon IP, including marketing and development.

Now the court is waiting for the Australian company to respond and has marked TPCi’s request for documents regarding deceptive internal conduct, business activities and third-party communications to minimize damages as reasonable. It appears PPL and Kotiota will have some time to respond as the court wants to “reserve costs at this stage”, but discovery and disclosure orders are on the table.

This is also not the first time TPCi has had to take action against mobile developers using its IP for blatant copyright infringement this year. It previously sued six different Chinese companies for doing so — one of which raised over $43.4 million.