The Pokémon Company runs Pokémon and licenses it to the world, but its name is on almost none of the trademark registers. In Japan the core marks belong jointly to Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak. Abroad, nearly every record we read is in a Nintendo company’s name, and Nintendo of America brought all 25 of the Pokémon cases we found at the US trademark board since 2019. What The Pokémon Company has is a share of the copyright and a job, given to it in 1998: “to manage and control all rights to Pokemon throughout the world”. The contract that sets out that job has never been published.
The registers name the three owners in Japan and Nintendo everywhere else we looked
The Pokémon Company has said so itself. In a 2019 dispute over a Japanese domain name it told the panel that it was “not a trademark owner”, and the panel found that the marks belong to Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak. The same ruling records that copyright in the characters belongs to four companies, The Pokémon Company among them. One US registration shows the same four-way pattern: Pokémon Scarlet names Game Freak, The Pokémon Company, Creatures and Nintendo of America as copyright claimants.
Abroad there is one group of holders. Nintendo of America holds all 6 US records of Pokémon titles filed through the international system that we read, Nintendo Co. holds the 9 Australian and 5 British ones, and Canada’s POKÉMON registration, filed in 1997, is Nintendo of America’s. For comparison, a wider sample of US filings since 2016 turned up 39 by the Nintendo group and at least two by The Pokémon Company International, filed between 2016 and 2019. One such filing, a character design for Pokkén, has since been assigned to Nintendo of America.
Title keeps moving the same way. Nintendo Co. files in Japan, and the US part of each new international registration passes to Nintendo of America; on five recent ones, the transfer took 79–185 days. The Western arm appears on the US record only as a user. Since mid-2021 Nintendo has listed The Pokémon Company International, described as an affiliate, as an authorised user on 46 of its 70 current Pokémon recordations at US Customs. That listing states no terms. Fig. 1 sets out the whole arrangement, right by right.
Three companies own the Pokémon name and a fourth runs it
Who holds each right in Pokémon, on the registers and documents we read. A filled dot means the company holds that right.
Filled dot: holds it.
In court, Nintendo of America defends the marks and The Pokémon Company sues on copyright
Who goes to court follows who is on the register. Nintendo of America’s list at the US trademark board shows 25 oppositions and cancellations over Pokémon marks filed between January 2019 and August 2026, and it is the only plaintiff in each. Searches of the board’s docket for The Pokémon Company and for The Pokémon Company International as a party return nothing. Fig. 2 shows the count. The border works the same way: at Japanese customs it is Nintendo that applies to stop counterfeit trading cards, and New Zealand’s customs notice for POKEMON and PIKACHU is filed for Nintendo too.
Nintendo of America brought all 25 US trademark board cases over Pokémon since 2019; The Pokémon Company brought none
Oppositions and cancellations over Pokémon marks at the US Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, by plaintiff, filed January 2019 to August 2026.
Show the numbers
| Plaintiff | Oppositions and cancellations over Pokémon marks, as plaintiff, cases | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Nintendo of America | ||
| The Pokémon Company International | ||
| The Pokémon Company |
Oppositions and cancellations over Pokémon marks, as plaintiff. Cases filed from January 2019 to August 2026 in which a mark on either side contains Poké, Pika or Pikachu. Nintendo of America is the only plaintiff in each. The zeros are party-name searches of the whole board docket; the search was run without the accent, and older pages of Nintendo’s own list were not read. The Pokémon Company International has sued alone in a federal court, on copyright, in 2015.
The Pokémon Company’s side sues where it holds copyright. Its Western arm sued alone in Seattle in 2015 over an unofficial party, pleading that “TPCi is the sole owner of copyright in the Pokémon Works”. In China the Tokyo company was the plaintiff against a copycat game, and a Shenzhen court awarded it about ¥2.3bn in July 2024, roughly a fifth of what it had claimed. That award was at first instance, and the case was settled on appeal in February 2025 on confidential terms, so the sum paid is unknown.
One Australian case shows how little a claim priced on lost royalties can recover. In Australia the Western arm sued the print-on-demand site Redbubble and claimed A$44,555.84 in consumer-law damages, worked out at a royalty of 7.5% on the sales it said it had lost. The Federal Court awarded A$1, because the company had not shown that those sales would otherwise have earned it a royalty. Fig. 3 puts the two amounts on one scale.
The Pokémon Company International claimed A$44,556 from Redbubble and was awarded A$1
Consumer-law damages claimed and awarded, Federal Court of Australia, December 2017, Australian dollars.
Show the numbers
| Consumer-law damages | The Pokémon Company International v Redbubble, Federal Court of Australia, December 2017, A$ | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Damages claimed | ||
| Damages awarded |
The Pokémon Company International v Redbubble, Federal Court of Australia, December 2017. The claim applied a 7.5% royalty, a rate assumed by the company’s own witness, to Redbubble’s sales of Pokémon-tagged designs. The court made declarations in the company’s favour and granted no injunction. Both bars share one scale, so the award is too thin to see.
Licensees buy the whole look, and Nintendo’s marks have widened to cover it
A licence covers the creatures, the artwork and the Poké Ball together. We found no licence, price list or style guide that charges for one element by itself, and retail prices follow the partner. Uniqlo’s children’s Pokémon T-shirt stayed at ¥990 across three different art styles, while a designer label’s Pikachu T-shirt costs about 6.6× Uniqlo’s adult one.
The registered marks behind that bundle are Nintendo’s, and they now reach most of what a licensing programme sells. Nintendo of America’s first Poké Ball mark, registered in 2001, covered 1 class of goods, toys. Its Poké Ball shape mark of 2024 covers 18, from clothing to food and cosmetics, and the Pokémon logo it registered in May 2026 covers 20, including restaurants, hotels and streaming, as Fig. 4 shows. Of the ten such marks we tabulated in the US and Japan, none is currently held by The Pokémon Company or its Western arm.
Nintendo’s 2001 Poké Ball mark covered one US product class; its two newest marks cover 18 and 20
Product classes covered by three US trademark registrations held by Nintendo of America.
Show the numbers
| Mark | Classes covered by the US registration, classes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Poké Ball word mark, 2001 | ||
| Poké Ball shape mark, 2024 | ||
| Pokémon logo, filed 2025 |
Classes covered by the US registration. All three are held by Nintendo of America, none by The Pokémon Company. Separate registrations, not one mark widened; a claimed class is a right to license, not proof of use. Only the US register was read.
In Japan a publisher’s licensing arm signs the merchandise licence
Outside Japan a licensee signs with The Pokémon Company’s side. Takara Tomy’s Western toy licence, which ran from 2012, named The Pokémon Company International as licensor. Inside Japan the name on the contract is Shogakukan-Shueisha Productions, the licensing arm of the publisher Shogakukan, known as ShoPro. It approves a product plan and then concludes the contract in its own name.
Takara Tomy’s annual filings date the change. The Pokémon Company was named beside ShoPro on the Japanese toy licence in the filings for the years to March 2013, 2014 and 2015. In each of the eleven filings since, ShoPro is named alone, on terms renewed every year, the latest running to 31 May 2027, as Fig. 5 shows. ShoPro describes its remit as rights management for merchandise sold in Japan. Of the three owners only Game Freak says publicly that it has entrusted that window to ShoPro, and The Pokémon Company runs its own form for Japanese licence enquiries that does not mention ShoPro.
Since the year to March 2016, Takara Tomy’s filings name only Shogakukan’s licensing arm on its Pokémon toy licence
Who is named as licensor on the Japanese Pokémon toy licence in each Takara Tomy annual filing, years to March 2013 to 2026.
What it adds up to
Nintendo’s standing order with Japanese customs against counterfeit Pokémon cards expires on 25 April 2027, and any renewal will be listed under the applicant’s name.