Gotta catch 'em all: Pokemon lawyers hit cafe manager with $5,400 bill for copyright infringement
As anyone who has ever watched Pokémon knows, Pikachu and the other characters can only say their names and nothing else. This is probably why they have a team of lawyers writing their complaints and briefs for them.
According to a Monday story from Vice, a Seattle café manager is looking at a $5,400 bill for using copyrighted images of Pikachu and others without authorization to advertise a Pokémon-themed party. According to the story, Pokémon’s legal team at Davis Wright Tremaine sued Ramar Larkin Jones, a self-described Pokémon fanatic, over his use of Pokémon characters on his café’s fliers. Jones then received a letter last month from Stuart Dunwoody, a lawyer at David Wright Tremaine, offering to settle the matter for $5,400 bill and a final injunction.
“The Pokémon Company International is willing to settle this lawsuit on the terms set forth in the enclosed Final Judgment and Permanent Injunction … [which] includes a judgment in the amount of $5,400 for costs and attorney’s fees,” Dunwoody wrote in the letter to Jones. “These fees will increase if additional lawyer time is required to finalize this settlement.”
Jones told VICE that he didn’t hire a lawyer because he was told that going through the litigation process would probably cost him as much as it would to just settle the case. Even then, Jones said he would have trouble paying the $5,400 up front. “I can’t pay it,” he said. “I manage a cafe, and cost of living is super expensive in Seattle. I am hoping I can try to pay it over the course of a year, because I simply want to be done with it.”
Jones also said that he is no longer a Pokémon fan—at least on the business end of things. “It’s a part of my childhood, and you know that if you’re in the culture you can’t really get away from it,” Jones said. “But as far as them as a business, I’m done, yeah. For them, this money doesn’t matter at all.”
Pokémon representatives declined to comment to Vice, saying that “the case is not settled.”
