Nintendo has a reputation for aggressively protecting its intellectual property, acting swiftly to take down fan projects like Pokemon Uranium or the Super Mario Bros. battle royale game. Now Nintendo has apparently targeted TikTok star pokeprincxss, forcing the popular user to completely re-brand her online identity and hand over money she’s made on merchandising.
Pokeprincxss has 1.9 million TikTok followers at the time of this writing, and she also has an extensive following on Twitch. However, she can no longer go by the name pokeprincxss, and is now known online as digitalprincxss instead. In a recent YouTube video, the TikTok star formerly known as pokeprincxss explained the situation, revealing why Nintendo sued her and forced her to re-brand.
The pokeprincxss name is directly inspired by Nintendo’s Pokemon franchise, with the content creator now known as digitalprincxss also covered in tattoos of various Pokemon. Capitalizing on her TikTok fame, pokeprincxss began selling merchandise based on her online identity, like many popular creators on the app do, and she also trademarked her username through the LegalZoom website.
Please note that the following video has some offensive language.
With the pokeprincxss name clearly inspired by the Pokemon franchise, pokeprincxss created merchandise that featured Pokemon imagery, like Pokeballs, for instance. “I was young and dumb and I was just going full force with it because I didn’t know what I was doing was wrong,” she explained. Pokeprincxss believed that using the Pokemon imagery was fair use as it would fall under parody, and she saw many other people selling Pokemon content, like fan art, online.
But then two months ago, pokeprincxss received an email from LegalZoom explaining that she had been issued a cease and desist by Nintendo. It seems Nintendo did not want people to think that she was affiliated with the company, as pokeprincxss also works in the adult entertainment industry. As one might imagine, this would greatly conflict with Nintendo’s family-friendly image.
Pokeprincxss hired a lawyer who helped her resolve the issue with Nintendo as well as assist her in the re-branding process. Some fans asked why she couldn’t just change the spelling to “poki” or something similar, but she explained that having anything that even looked like it could be related to Pokemon in her name could get her in more legal trouble with Nintendo. She also noted that she was unsure why there were some people with “poki” in their name that make money from it and don’t get in trouble, perhaps referring to popular Twitch streamer Pokimane, though that wasn’t specified.
Pokeprincxss believes that she may have gotten Nintendo’s attention because of her work in the adult entertainment industry, the trademark she filed for the name, and for selling merchandise with Pokemon imagery. Ultimately, she had to pay Nintendo all of the money she made from merchandise sales, and is now going by digitalprincxss online.
Some fans have pointed out that digitalprincxss could see her get in trouble because some may associate it with Pokemon rival Digimon. But according to her Twitter, she is confident that she will avoid any legal trouble with Digimon as none of her content or her brand has anything to do with the Digimon franchise.
Pokeprincxss stresses at the end of her video that she has no hard feelings for Nintendo. While it is upsetting to her that she was sued by a company that was such a big part of her childhood, she insists that she will continue supporting Nintendo. “I’ll give my soul to Nintendo. After watching this video, go buy a Switch or something.”
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