PokéWorld NFT sued – The Cryptonomist

The PokéWorld NFT game has been sued by the real The Pokémon Company International because it would not have a license to use the real company’s intellectual property. 

PokéWorld NFT is not licensed to use the intellectual property 

Pokémon Pty Ltd, the Australian company behind the PokéWorld NFT game, appears to be unfairly using The Pokémon Company International’s name to advertise its Non-Fungible Tokens. 

In fact, the “PokéWorld” website falsely states that The Pokémon Company International and Kotiota are making the game that will be released in January 2023. 

Obviously, The Pokémon Company International has sued the Australian company and the court is acting to prevent Pokémon Pty Ltd from claiming licenses or affiliations with Pokémon Company. 

Specifically, the Australian Federal Court ruled Wednesday to prevent Pokémon Pty Ltd from launching this game or selling any NFTs using Pokémon’s intellectual property (IP).

The company will also not be allowed to use trademarks or images of The Pokémon Company and will not be able to claim licenses or affiliations with the company that owns the name. 

PokéWorld NFT: who is behind the website stealing intellectual property?

According to reports, Pokémon Pty Ltd, apparently based in Melbourne, was registered as a company in 2016 and appears to operate under the name Kotiota Studios. 

All these entities would boil down to one person, Xiaoyan Liu. Kotiota, which does not appear to exist at the given address, then created the website for PokéWorld. 

Basically, it is a smartphone game in which you fight Pokémon such as Charmander and Pikachu to win POKESHARD tokens, connected to Ethereum. All in-game items that are purchased are minted as NFTs, so anyone can trade them down to their base value of zero.

At the moment, while the website appears to still be online, PokéWorld’s Twitter account appears to be suspended. 

It is worth mentioning that despite the ongoing court action, Pokémon characters can still be seen on the website, even including narrated animated videos showing the 3D monsters. Not only that, the website openly mentions the involvement of The Pokémon Company International with repeated claims. 

Nintendo and The Pokémon Company will not launch NFT Pokémon for now

While the project uses PokéWorld for its game NFTs, the reality is that The Pokémon Company and Nintendo have instead jointly decided that they will not launch Pokémon NFTs for the time being. 

However, this does not mean that the two giants do not see the current trend in the crypto industry dedicated to NFTs and Metaverse. 

On the contrary, as early as last May, former Nintendo President Reggie Fils-Aimé said that the game companies are ready to be leaders in the metaverse. Fils-Aimé also reportedly said that gaming and the metaverse go hand in hand. 

Not only that, a few months earlier, the video game company shared with its audience its concerns about NFTs, such that they should be used not to diminish the joy of its fans. 

A way of looking at the crypto sector of NFTs more accurately without experiencing it directly, as its competitor SEGA had done, which indeed ended up with a reaction from fans that was not entirely positive.