Pokemon Co., Ltd. seems to have filed a lawsuit against six Chinese companies due to copyright infringement. South China Morning Post reports.
It is reported that the six defendants have been operating a mobile game with a similarity or similarity since 2015, not permission from the right. Pokemon Co., Ltd. has called for defendants to suspend the development, distribution, operation, and advertise of games, and to compensate for 500 million yuan (about 10.14 billion yen).
The app distributed by Jiangyin Zhongnan Heavy Industries, which is one of the defendants, was entitled Local Reissue or Chinese (image below) (image below). The key art also has Satoshi, Pikachu, Mijumaru and Pokabu. It is likely that users will be misunderstood if they are distributed under a formal license from Pokemon Co., Ltd. It is reported that the app recorded a total sales of 300 million yuan (about 6 billion yen) in 2016, one year after the release. It seems that monthly sales were over 30 million yuan (about 600 million yen).
The app is said to be distributed in the Apple App Store and Android Store in China. The Android store being distributed includes the Store operated by Tencent Holdings, Huawei Technologies Co and Xiaomi. Not only the distraction of key art, but also being distributed on various platforms in China seems to be one of the reasons for increasing sales. The app is said to be so popular that the user community is formed.
You can also check the play video of the app on YouTube. There are a number of illustrations that use artwork from the Pokemon series as they are, and the battle system seems to be very similar. It seems that in-game items are used for evolution, and monetization may be performed by item billing. In addition to Pokemon with an arrangement, there seems to be an original monster.
Pokemon Co., Ltd. has requested the defendant to apologize on SNS, a major Chinese website, such as SINA.com, Tencent.com, and Netease.com, in addition to the request mentioned above. With a large apology, you may be aiming to let users inform you that it was an unofficial Pokemon app.
What kind of ruling will be filed by Pokemon Co., Ltd. to six Chinese companies? Future trends will be noticed.