The Pokémon Company International, Inc v Pokemon Pty Ltd [2022] FCA 1561: The importance of an intellectual property protection strategy

• Author: Mr Tim O'Callaghan, Travis Shueard and Laura Coppola
• Law Firm: Piper Alderman
• Published date: 06 February 2023

Gaming giant Nintendo's The Pokémon Company International, Inc (TPCI) was recently successful in obtaining an interlocutory injunction against Pokemon Pty Ltd (PPL) and its sole director Xiaoyan Liu for threatening to release a range of Pokémon themed Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) without its permission.¹

While the proceedings are ongoing, this decision provides a timely example of how acting expeditiously to protect your intellectual property is imperative in the modern era.

Background

TPCI is a wholly owned subsidiary of the famous Japanese video game company, Nintendo. TPCI oversees the brand management, licensing and marketing of merchandise of the multi-billion dollar Pokémon franchise.²

As most would know, the Pokémon franchise was originally a series of video games based upon fictional animated characters (the "Pokémon", short for "pocket monsters"). This franchise has since spawned countless other products, such as a long running animated television series, clothes, games, trading cards, toys, etc.

PPL, a company completely unrelated to TPCI or Nintendo, was incorporated on 7 December 2016 and its director registered the domain name https://pokeworld/game/ on 16 August 2022. This domain name hosted a website called "PokeWorld" (Website).

The Website advertised a Pokémon themed game called "PokeWorld" offered by PPL and "Kotiota Studios", an entity related to PPL and its director. The Website promoted the upcoming launch of "PokeWorld" and also the release...