Recently, in the appeal of the copyright infringement and unfair competition lawsuit between the globally renowned IP franchise "Pokémon" and the game app "Pocket Monster: Remake(口袋妖怪：复刻)", represented by Mr. Ni Tinggang and Mr. Qin Pengfei of our law firm, the settlement agreement was finally reached under the guidance of the High People’s Court of Guangdong Province.

This is The Pokémon Company’s first lawsuit initiated in China to protect its intellectual property (IP) for the "Pokémon" game series. The relevant defendants have fulfilled their obligations under the settlement agreement and published apology statements in the Legal Daily and The Paper, admitting that they had extensively used the design elements of the well-known game series "Pokémon" in their game app, thus infringing the relevant copyrights of the "Pokémon" game series, as well as constituting acts of unfair competition as they took advantage of the popularity and good reputation of the Pokémon.

Since the initiation of the case in December 2021, our lawyers have represented The Pokémon Company and maximized the interests of the client in the litigation process for years, with significant results achieved in the final.

At the first instance of the lawsuit, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court granted The Pokémon Company the damages of over 107 million CNY. This has set a record for the highest compensation amount in the history of game infringement lawsuits in China.

“Pocket Monster: Remake” game promotions

The court of the first instance has determined that the Pokémon characters, game protagonists, maps, etc. in the accused game are correspondingly similar to the elements in the plaintiff’s game. Multiple game systems formed with the combination of game elements were highly similar or even identical to the plaintiff’s game, and the accused game also had an identical design to the game’s numerical systems, and the game experience based on the accused elements and systems was also the same as the "Pokémon" series for players. Therefore, the specific story expression of the accused game is substantially similar to the "Pokémon" game series, and the accused game app infringes the copyright of the "Pokémon" game series. In addition, the court also determined that the operation and promotion of the accused game had violated the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and constituted acts of unfair competition.

As a complex and massive foreign-related intellectual property litigation, our two lawyers, with their rich experience and deep understanding of the "Pokémon" game series, conducted an in-depth exploration of the infringing content, operation chain, income situation, and other facts of the accused game. They also made a lot of in-depth and detailed arguments on many new and complex copyright law issues and competition law theoretical issues such as the overall copyright protection of video games, the copyright protection of story content in video games, and the protection of game IP commercialization rights under the Anti Unfair Competition Law during the two instances of the trials.

Against the backdrop of China's game industry going global, equal protection of intellectual property rights between Chinese and foreign parties under the framework of the law is also an important aspect of China's promotion of IP protection. Our lawyers successfully supported the world's top game and animation IP “Pokémon” to complete the protection of intellectual property rights across borders, which provides a practical model for promoting the compliance development of the related industries.