Pokemon Pty Ltd, an Australia-based company that has been advertising a mobile NFT game, titled PokeWorld, has been sued by The Pokemon Company International due to unauthorized use of the intellectual property. As spotted by Vooks, the real Pokemon company is taking a lawsuit to cease the operations of Pokemon Pty Ltd, including selling NFTs based on its trademark.
The company behind the PokeWorld NFT game appears to be using The Pokemon Company's intellectual property to advertise its own project. That violation resulted in the court ruling to prevent the NFT company from launching its game and claiming licenses or affiliations. The Federal Court of Australia has also ruled to block the company from using The Pokemon Company's trademarks on its images, social media accounts, and official website. Additionally, it won't be able to sell any NFTs using the Pokemon license.
The filing lodged with the Federal Court of Australia asked for an injunction to prevent Pokemon Pty Ltd from representing itself as the owner of the rights to Pokemon properties. However, the PokeWorld website is still available at the time of writing. It is expected to be shut down due to unfairly using Pokemon trademarks to advertise its NFT project.
Interestingly, Kotiato Studios claimed to have worked in collaboration with The Pokemon Company in the past. Although PokeWorld is due to release in December 2023, it won't be actually happening in adherence to the court order.
According to the court document, the counsel for The Pokemon Company reiterated that Nintendo, TPCi, and The Pokemon Company have made a deliberate decision not to launch any NFT games based on a Pokemon trademark. "The PokeWorld Website advertises a new game “brought to you by The Pokemon Company International and Kotiota“. I understand that Kotiota Studios (Kotiota) is an entity related to the respondents in their business endeavor the subject of these proceedings. On that website, there is a section titled “2022-2023 ROADMAP” which appears to outline the timeline for the launch of PokeWorld and the release of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) related to Pokemon characters. A review of that webpage indicates that the PokeWorld game will launch in January 2023."
All operations of Kotiato Studios regarding the Pokemon NFT game, including its website and social media account, are expected to be taken down in the near future.