 In December of last year, the Pokémon Company won a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Australia against the game development studio for using their intellectual property without permission. The only problem, the studio in question, doesn't exist. This story dropped into our laps just as we were wrapping up for Christmas last year, but it might be one of the weirdest things we saw in all of 2022. Brace yourself, this lawsuit involves private investigators, an imaginary office space, fake-linked in-accounts written in Russian, brazen and completely incompetent intellectual property theft, a woman named Leslie, and an unlicensed Pokémon game in which you feed Pikachu poisons. You may have heard part of this story. It was widely reported that the Pokémon Company successfully sued the development studio for trying to make unlicensed Pokémon NFTs. Most news outlets reported this simple fact and moved on, but one detail about the way that the Pokémon Company found out about the studio's unlicensed work caught my attention, and the further I dug the more baffling the story became. This is the closest I've seen to a Pokémon noir detective thriller since the Looker chapters in Pokémon X and Y, or, well, I guess, Detective Pikachu. I'm not sure why my mind thought of Looker first, except that David Tennant is back as Doctor Who. According to the official court documents, there's a link in the description, in August of 2022 the Pokémon Company was contacted by two news outlets requesting clarification over emails they had received. Mexican news agency Notepress and entertainment website Bleeding Cool had both received emails from the legal team at Koshiota Studio requesting a change to their coverage of the latest Pokémon games. The emails claimed that Koshiota Studios had been involved in development for Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, and that all coverage of the games should state that the games were developed by Game Freak and Koshiota Studio, which is just incredible, a phenomenal lie. Imagine having the audacity to simply start emailing professional news outlets and taking credit for other people's work. Because in case you were wondering, the Pokémon Company asserts that Koshiota Studio was definitely trying to take credit for other people's work. What's bizarre here is that nobody at the supposed Koshiota Studios legal team recognized that, if they managed to get the credit they were aiming for, the Pokémon Company would become aware of them very quickly and not be impressed. This wasn't all, though. The Pokémon Company was also contacted by Kryptonite Agency in Dubai. According to the court documents, quote, the representative of Kryptonite Agency indicated that Kryptonite Agency recently started working with a company called Pokémon Pty, which was building a new game in the Web 3 space containing the creation of NFTs and more, and claimed to have an official license agreement with the Pokémon Company International. Kryptonite Agency stated that they were sent a license agreement by Pokémon Pty and sought that the Pokémon Company confirmed that there was in fact a license and affiliation between both parties. So, the Pokémon Company asserts that not only was Koshiota Studio trying to convince games journalists to credit them for a game they didn't make, a second connected entity, Pokémon Pty Ltd, forged a license agreement for the Pokémon Company and attempted to use it to fool potential partners into working with them. This being the case, what exactly were Koshiota Studio and Pokémon Pty Ltd working on? Well, let's have a look. Despite the fact that they lost the lawsuit against the Pokémon Company, for reasons we'll get into soon, Koshiota Studio's website is still online. Here we have the website. Here's a big claim, quote, Koshiota Studio Australia, one of the Pokémon Company's Japan list of contractor partners, which handles the full range of animation and game environment development. Here's an address in New South Wales where the company claims to work and, oh boy, we will come back to this later. Here's a claim that they worked on Pokémon Snap, the Pokémon Company says they didn't. Here they claim to have worked on Pokémon Scarlet and Violet, Pokémon Sleep, Poki World, more on this later, that'll be fun, Pokémon Home, and the unconnected Pokémon like Dracomon. Here's the team, complete with LinkedIn profiles. Shall we have a look and see what we find here? This one is my favourite, so we'll take this as an example. Jason Grant, Project Manager at Koshiota Studio, lives in the Rocks, New South Wales, studied at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology from 1996 to 2001, scroll far enough down his profile and it swaps to Russian. This says Australia, this says working group leader. He's been a busy boy, he took time out of his crypto career to spend a year as Project Manager for Santander UK before heading back to Australia to work for Koshiota Studio. To put things simply, I doubt. I doubt that Jason Grant exists, or that if he does he has any idea who Koshiota Studio even is. For reasons we'll get into, with this case, just because there's a name, it doesn't mean it's the right one. In addition to the still very much online Koshiota Studio website, the site for the game that the team who was making is still online, all court rulings notwithstanding. Here it is, pokiworld.game. Pokiworld is a meta-universe P2E game filled with fascinating pokemons that players can collect as pets, players aim to battle, evolve, feed and raise their pokemons. This feels like an important point to pause and note that there's a world of difference between a Pokemon fan game, even and especially a Pokemon fan MMO which does a lot of the same things that Pokiworld claims to do, and an unlicensed game designed first and foremost to make money. This is the latter. We will see from the way the Pokemon company responded to this just how different the two cases can be. What's really weird though is, even though this looks cheap, there's some budget behind it. The website features several trailers with what sounds like professional American voiceover, although maybe I'm just easily fooled and this was done way AI. It's in one of these trailers though, in a mocked up UI that looks like every awful mobile game I've ever seen, that I spotted my favourite part of the game. You can feed Pikachu poisons. The voiceover makes it clear that this is supposed to read potions, but I just love it. Nobody in the development team spotted this. It's brilliant. It's worth noting that Pokiworld was gaining some momentum before the Pokemon company international got litigious. The Pokemon company's attorney, Ms Catherine Fang, claims that as of December 2022, the Pokiworld Twitter account had 13,500 followers. It's not much, but it's about 13,000 more than I've ever had, although these followers could very well be bought and paid for. According to Ms Fang, Koshiota Studio was incorrectly claiming to have developed the open world for Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, which is just fascinating. Imagine trying to claim credit for the open world in Scarlet and Violet. So having decided that Koshiota Studio was clearly in violation of their intellectual property, the Pokemon company gave the job of shutting them down to their Australian solicitor, Mr David Fixler. And I've got to say, in a crime story such as this, I'm very glad that there is a character called Mr Fixler. Mr Fixler's first port of call was one that we've seen from Nintendo and the Pokemon company a thousand times. He sent some emails to Koshiota Studio. Rather than the mildly threatening cease and desist messages that Fang games get, the Pokemon company arranged a tentative interlocutory hearing and attempted to email Koshiota Studio to let them know, basically, we'll see you in court. There was no response. As noted, the Koshiota Studio website is still online, and its claims about Pokemon development are also still online. Mr Fixler was ignored. So Mr Fixler arranged for private investigators to pay Koshiota Studio a home visit. The address listed on Koshiota Studio's website is Level 14 3-parameter-square-parameter-2150 New South Wales, Australia. This is an office complex. It looks nice. Exactly the kind of place you'd expect to find a development studio. There is no Koshiota Studio present in the building. When contacted, nobody at the address had any knowledge of the studio. It doesn't actually exist. That's a problem when you're trying to shut something down. The only team member that the Pokemon company believed was real enough to include in their lawsuit is Xiaoyan Liu, who is listed in court documents as the, quote, soul director and secretary of Pokemon PTY Ltd. Real he might be, but it's hard to know for certain as nobody can find him. A woman known as Leslie suspects that whoever he might be, he has stolen her identity. The Pokemon company hired private investigation firm IFW Global to serve the court papers in person. IFW specializes in cybercrime and online fraud. They in turn subcontracted the workout to Mr Edward Halal, who has my new favorite job description ever. According to the official court documents, quote, Mr Halal is the owner of behind the truth investigations, a company specializing in private investigations. Mr Halal is a licensed private investigator through Victoria Police. I just wanted to include that to make it clear how cool this all sounds, even in the relatively dry court documents. With no other leads to follow, Mr Fixler obtained for Mr Halal a list of addresses for people named Xiaoyan Liu from the Electoral Register. One address corresponded with the address used by Liu to register the Pokemon PTY Ltd. Mr Halal visited and the woman who answered the door said she didn't know a Xiaoyan Liu. Being thorough, Halal checked the building's letter boxes and there was no sign of a Xiaoyan Liu living at the address. A dead end. So Halal moved on to check the second address from the Electoral Roll. This happened. Quote, At or about 10.23 am on 20 December 2022, Mr Halal attended and rang the doorbell of the 10th Street address which is the registered address and principal place of business of Pokemon PTY Ltd and which is listed as the current address of Xiaoyan Liu. No one answered. Mr Halal also rang the doorbell for Unit 4 at the front gate and no one answered. Mr Halal spoke to the neighbour in Unit 3 who stated to Mr Halal that an Asian male lived in Unit 4. Mr Halal knocked at Unit 5 and a woman opened the door of Unit 5. Mr Halal said to the woman that he was looking for Xiaoyan Liu, to which she responded, Yes, that's me. Mr Halal asked the woman, Are you Xiaoyan Liu? And she said, Yes, that's me. Mr Halal then served her with the documents and the woman said, Thank you. Although she probably wasn't quite as thankful when she read them. Not completely satisfied he'd reached the right person, Mr Halal later returned and left a copy of the documents for Unit 4. Xiaoyan Liu's actual listed address. He then spoke again with the woman from Unit 5 who he noted was wearing a name tag that read Leslie and whose letter box read Yu Xi Yan Liu. According to the court documents, Quote, The woman informed Mr Halal that she had never heard of Pokemon PTY Ltd, knew nothing about this matter, and that it must be a case of mistaken identity or identity theft by her neighbour. Trying one last-ditched attempt to contact the real Xiaoyan Liu, IFW Global resorted to the bottom of the barrel approach. They slid into his DMs on Twitter. Dear account holder, We are processing services acting for the Pokemon Company International Incorporated. Pokemon Company has sued the suspected operators of this account in the federal court of Australia, and a hearing has been set for the 21st of December. Refer to the attached letters for details. Please also respond to this message with an email address via which the Pokemon Company's lawyers may contact you and provide you with relevant court documents. So despite the fact that nobody at the Pokemon Company nor several private investigators have actually been able to make contact with this mystery man, Catherine Fang concluded, Quote, I am further satisfied that the present proceedings and this morning's hearing have been brought to the attention of the respondents. So in the absence of Xiaoyan Liu or anyone from Koshio to Studio or Pokemon PTY Ltd, the judge found in favour of the Pokemon Company. Good news for the Pokemon Company, except, as noted, the Poke World website is still online. The Koshio to Studio website and all its many claims about co-developing Pokemon games is still online. All the Pokemon Company have managed to do is take down the Poke World Twitter account, but then given the state of Twitter at the moment, that's a decent accomplishment in and of itself. The moral of this bizarre tale, if you sue someone who doesn't exist, they might not do what you tell them to. 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