While the Palworld case continues to tick away in the background, The Pokémon Company has recently won another lawsuit against a Chinese mobile app on the grounds of copyright infringement and acts of unfair competition (thanks, Eurogamer).
TPC’s case against ‘Pocket Monster: Remake’ (or, sometimes, ‘Pocket Monster: Issue/Reissue’) has been running for years. Starting back in 2022, the Pokémon studio announced that it was seeking damages of around £60 million / $70 million, claiming that the app clearly ripped assets and gameplay from the Pokémon series — we’ve attached some footage from YouTube account James Hu below, so you can see the app in action.
The case was resolved last September, though Guangzhou Maichi Network Technology and Khorgos Fangchi Network Technology (the two companies involved in the mobile app) appealed the decision, pushing the legal proceedings back to last week when a Chinese court put the case to bed for good.
While we don’t know the exact amount that the companies involved were forced to settle in the end, a joint statement shared on the TPC corporate website specifies that the pair have paid “a substantial economic price” and have incurred “significant reputational damage” in the process.
In the formal apology, Guangzhou Maichi and Khorgos Fangchi stated that the mobile app “extensively used design elements of the well-known Pokémon Video Game Series” and “has unfairly taken advantage of the fame and reputation of the Pokémon Video Games”, constituting an act of unfair competition and copyright infringement.
Under the guidance of relevant precedents and judicial documents issued by the High People’s Court of Guangdong Province, We have deeply realized that our acts had violated relevant laws during the second-instance trial and settlement process. The Game has extensively used design elements of the well-known Pokémon Video Game Series, infringing the copyrights related to the Pokémon Video Games, and has unfairly taken advantage of the fame and reputation of the Pokémon Video Games, thereby constituting acts of unfair competition. Our copyright infringement and acts of unfair competition have caused significant economic losses to the rights holders and severely damaged the image of the original Pokémon Video Games. We hereby sincerely apologize to TPC and other rights holders, as well as the vast number of players, consumers, and the general public.
The app in question has now been removed from the market, the statement concludes, with the companies pledging to “place a high priority on intellectual property protection, [and] refrain from infringing upon any related intellectual property rights or interests of the Pokémon Video Games” in the future.
TPC and Nintendo’s high-profile lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair is still ongoing. While the case has been focused on Japanese courts so far, recent Nintendo patent approvals in the U.S. suggest that things may soon expand to an international reach.