On December 21st, 2022, The Federal Court of Australia posted public details of court proceedings against Kotiota Studio by the The Pokémon Company International. Kotiota Studio is using the Pokémon IP in order to create a crypto game called PokéWorld and to sell Pokémon NFT's. They also claim to be a developer on the yet to be released Pokémon Sleep app.


In August 2022, PocketMonsters.net was contacted by Oshea Hayes, apparently of the legal department of Kotiota Studio. They indidcated that we needed to modify a news article and official Pokémon Company press release that we posted on May 27, 2022, at https://www.pocketmonsters.net/news/3627. They stated that we did not credit them for their work as a game developer on titles like Pokémon Sleep. Obviously, being an official press release, we were not going to modify it. The e-mail threatened to take legal action against us for not complying with their request under an unspecified WIPO article.



As many of our visitors know, we take our journalist integrity seriously, and correct errors when they are reported. Our staff quickly investigated the claim by this company and came to the conclusion that they were attempting to threaten us for SEO linking results to make their website seem legitimate. Their site is a crypto and NFT scam. We sent an e-mail to The Pokémon Company International legal department outlining our encounter with these scammers.

The Pokémon Company International is very concerned about the irreparable and long-term impact of the franchise being misrepresented and associated with crypto and NFT's. They are also very concerned about the deliberate strategy to mislead consumers about the Pokémon franchise. Court proceedings are ongoing in Australia and should be concluded in 2023.

Source: http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/cases/cth/FCA/2022/1561.html