>>43515925I assume the word pokemon can't appear anywhere within the hack or promotional material, and neither the words pokeball, pokedex, or creature names like pikachu, and so on. I don't think they can do anything (at least right away) if only the designs are similar: for example a green pikachu with antennas and it's called "zapichu" instead of pikachu, I don't know what they can do about it then.
That's probably why the other anon said "and fall into obscurity", because normally people only pay attention to these kinds of games if they have pokemon in it. Name it something else and nobody cares. You can still make money if you make it into a mobile game and fill it to the brim with ads, but then you'd have to compete with the ocean of monster catching ripoffs already in that market.
Dynamon is a series of mobile games that makes more or less what I'm talking about. It's clearly living off the asociation with pokemon, but the word pokemon appears nowhere in it, the game uses disks too catch instead of pokeballs, some mons are just recolors (fennecorn is a green fennekin with a corn cob for a tail), trainers and gym leaders are called captains, etc. I don't think it can be sued.
There's also the evocreo games, which are more clearly pokemon based, and also a paid game.
