Pokémon Company Pocket Monster Remake Lawsuit

The Pokémon Company is certainly known for their games and very memorable characters, right? But just recently, we saw them get in some sort of legal fight with a Chinese game developer, and this was precisely what everyone referred to as the Pokémon Company Pocket Monster Remake Lawsuit. If you don’t know whatever is going on with this case, well, this was regarding a new game that was released by the name “Pocket Monster” and it became a hit soon after among game lovers. Though the problem with this game was that it looked a lot similar to the actual Pokémon Company games, and even, there were similar characters were used too. So, no wonder the Pokémon Company had to take some action, and that is what resulted in this lawsuit.

Even this copycat game made a lot of money, like $42 million in just one year, and sure enough, the Pokémon Company wasn’t having it.

How It All Started, And When

For those who haven’t been following the game industry for a while now, well, this copycat Pocket Monster: Remake game was actually launched back in 2015. And in just a few years or so, it got so popular that it started bringing in tons of profits for the developers.

So, up until 2021, the Pokémon Company had had enough of it, and they decided to take legal action against the developers of this game. So, the lawsuit was filed against two companies called the Guangzhou Maichi Network Technology and Khorgos Fangchi Network Technology.

With this lawsuit, the Pokémon Company aimed to just shut down this game completely, asked for $72 in damages and asked for a public apology too.

The Court Gets Involved

In this lawsuit, everything was in the favour of the Pokémon Company from the very start, so no wonder they were the winning side in this Pokémon Company Pocket Monster Remake Lawsuit. Like, in September 2024, a court in Shenzhen, China actually made a decision regarding this case. The court agreed that the copycat game actually broke the rules and just went ahead to copy the Pokémon game. This was simply the “unfair competition” practice.

So, after the hearings, the court actually went ahead and ordered the developers of this copycat game to pay a 107 million Chinese yuan fine, which is like around $15 million or so. This amount had to be paid to the Pokémon Company. But instead of doing that, the companies behind this copycat game appealed in this case right away.

The Apology & Final Deal

From the very start, the copycat game and its developers had no legal backing because they were in the wrong. So, sure enough, in the end, this case had to be settled, and this case finally went through something called a “mediated settlement.” Like, as per the Chinese court ruling in this case, the developers had to do a few things like:

• Pay the $15 million fine
• Take their game off the app stores
• Say sorry to The Pokémon Company publicly

Well, sure enough, they did all of it. And this case is now over.