Before The Pokémon Company existed, the name was already being claimed. In December 1997 Nintendo of America filed for the Pokémon trademark in the United States, and the same year PIKACHU was filed in Australia, also in Nintendo’s name. A few months later, in 1998, Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak set up a company “to manage and control all rights to Pokemon throughout the world”.
Managing is not owning, and almost thirty years later that distinction still holds. One of the best-known brands in the world is owned by three companies and run by a fourth.
Who holds what
Who holds each right in Pokémon, on the registers and documents the research reached.
Filled dot: holds it.
The founders hold the name. TPC holds a share of the copyright, the mandate to run the brand, and the profit.
Built from and .Owned where it is registered
TPC has said so itself. In a 2019 dispute over a domain name, it told the panel that it was “not a trademark owner”, and the panel agreed that the Japanese marks belong to Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak. TPC won the case anyway, as the manager with a legitimate interest. The same ruling records that the copyright in the characters belongs to all four companies, TPC included.
Abroad, the name belongs to Nintendo alone. On every foreign register the research reached, the United States, Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada, the holder is Nintendo or Nintendo of America. It is still filing: EEVEE and SQUIRTLE were filed in Australia in 2024, in Nintendo’s name. In a sample of US filings since 2016, TPC’s Western arm appears on a couple, the Nintendo group on dozens.
US Customs records show the same arrangement from the other side. When Nintendo records its Pokémon marks with US Customs and Border Protection, it must list who is authorised to use them. Since mid-2021 those lists have named The Pokémon Company International, described as an affiliate, together with its licensees: 46 of the 70 current records do, and none is held by TPCi. Every record filed or renewed from July 2021 carries the listing; none from before March 2021 does. The listing is a declaration that states no terms, not a licence. Title meanwhile keeps moving towards Nintendo of America: the five recent international registrations on record passed into its ownership within 79–185 days of being filed, among them a 2025 logo mark that also covers hotel and restaurant services.
The registers name Nintendo
Holder of the Pokémon trademarks checked, by trademark office outside Japan.
Office by office, the holder is Nintendo or Nintendo of America, never TPC.
Built from , and .Nintendo’s marks are also getting wider. Its first US Poké Ball mark, from 2001, covered toys. Its newer marks cover clothes, food, games, hotels and streaming. In Japan, Nintendo, Creatures and Game Freak hold three-dimensional marks as well as words: モンスターボール is their word mark, registered in 2000 and still in force; three registrations from 2017 and 2019 have images showing a Poké Ball, one from 2019 shows a red-and-white cap like Ash’s, and an older one, registered in 2000, shows a Pikachu-like figure. The register names no character, so these identifications are from the images. A newer filing, made in June 2022 to register Pikachu’s shape as a three-dimensional mark, is still under examination, with one notice of reasons for refusal on its file. Copyright in at least one game is held more widely than the marks: the US registration for Pokémon Scarlet names four claimants, Game Freak, The Pokémon Company, Creatures and Nintendo of America, each by written agreement, while TPC’s Western arm appears only as an author of the translation and packaging art.
The marks keep widening
Product classes covered by US trademarks held by Nintendo of America.
From one class of product in 2001 to around twenty today.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Mark | Classes covered by the US registration, classes | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Poké Ball word mark, 2001 | ||
| Poké Ball shape mark, 2024 | ||
| Pokémon logo, 2026 |
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.
What is protected is the creatures. Pikachu’s name alone has many US trademark records; none of the trainer names checked is held by a Pokémon company. (See Characters.)
Run from one place
Yet licensees do not sign with the owners. Outside Japan they sign with TPC’s side. Takara Tomy’s global toy licence names its licensor as “The Pokemon Company International”, TPC’s Western arm. In Japan, merchandise licences go through ShoPro, which approves plans and signs contracts in its own name. Its remit, as its Pokémon division describes it, is managing the rights for merchandise sold within Japan. Of the owners, only Game Freak says publicly that it has entrusted this window to ShoPro. TPC, for its part, runs its own intake for Japanese licence inquiries about products, campaigns and promotions, and does not mention ShoPro there.
Who signs in Japan
Who is named on the Pokémon toy licence in each of Takara Tomy’s annual filings, years to March.
Since the year to March 2016 the licence names only ShoPro.
Built from .What partners get is the whole look, licensed as one bundle: the creatures, the artwork, the Poké Ball. Nothing in the research shows any single element priced on its own. Prices follow the partner instead. Uniqlo’s children’s Pokémon T-shirt stayed at the same price across three different art styles, while a designer label’s Pikachu tee costs about 6.6× Uniqlo’s.
Why route licensing through a manager rather than the owners? No document says. The likely reason, on our reading, is practical: if three co-owners each had to consent to every licence, they would need a single agent to act for them. Whatever the reason, outside Japan’s merchandise window the result is one hand on every product. The Pikachu on a cereal box and the Pikachu in a card set answer to the same company.
Protecting it
Enforcement splits along the same line. At Japan’s border, it is Nintendo, as trademark owner, that files to stop counterfeit cards. In court, TPC’s side sues on copyright. Its Western arm has described itself as “TPCi is the sole owner of copyright in the Pokémon Works” in a US case, and TPC won about ¥2.3 billion in damages against a copycat game in Shenzhen.
Enforcement aims at businesses
Money claimed or awarded in Pokémon enforcement cases. Neither amount was necessarily received.
- Awarded: Shenzhen clone game, first instance
- Claimed: Palworld suit (Pocketpair’s account)
The largest award found was against a commercial clone. The Palworld suit claims a small sum.
Built from , and .Show the numbers
| Case | Awarded: Shenzhen clone game, first instance, ¥ million | Claimed: Palworld suit (Pocketpair’s account), ¥ million | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shenzhen clone game: awarded | – | ||
| Palworld: claimed | – |
Awarded: Shenzhen clone game, first instance. RMB 107 million converted to yen. Awarded in July 2024 and settled on appeal in February 2025 on undisclosed terms, so it is not money known to have been received. Neither amount is a census: these are the biggest found in the cases examined.
Claimed: Palworld suit (Pocketpair’s account). ¥5 million for each of the two claimants, as Pocketpair describes it; Nintendo’s own release mentions only an injunction and damages.
What the manager pays, and keeps
What TPC pays the owners for the use of their name is not visible. No document reached shows a royalty or licence fee, and none of them could have shown one below certain sizes. On our estimate, a royalty to the founders could be no larger than about ≈¥16bn a year without showing in their accounts. Zero is the starting assumption, not a finding.
How big a royalty could be
TPC’s reported operating margin, and the margin before any royalty to the founders up to the estimated maximum.
- Margin before a royalty at the most it could be (16.6% of sales)
- Reported operating margin
No royalty is on record. If there is one, it is capped.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Year | Margin before a royalty at the most it could be (16.6% of sales), % of sales | Reported operating margin, % of sales | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | |||
| 2022 | |||
| 2023 | |||
| 2024 | |||
| 2025 | |||
| 2026 |
Margin before a royalty at the most it could be (16.6% of sales). Our estimate of the ceiling: it assumes TPC’s profit is split pro rata between its owners, the founders’ other work at least breaks even and a constant rate since 2020, and rests on Creatures’ profit for the year to March 2020. An upper bound, not an estimate of a payment: no document shows one.
Reported operating margin. Tokyo parent, from the filed accounts.
What is visible is where the Tokyo company’s profit stays, and that is only part of the group’s: an estimated half of the group’s profit is outside the Tokyo company’s accounts. TPC’s Tokyo company has paid out about 3% of a decade’s profit and kept the rest. The owners are paid in other ways: by making the games, the cards and the apps (the payout record is on The Pokémon Company).
The profit stays
Net profit of TPC’s Tokyo parent each year, with the dividends paid out of it, ¥ billion.
- Net profit, Tokyo parent
- Dividends paid out of it
Two small payouts in ten years. The rest stayed in the company that does not own the name.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Year | Net profit, Tokyo parent, ¥bn | Dividends paid out of it, ¥bn | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | – | ||
| 2018 | |||
| 2019 | – | ||
| 2020 | – | ||
| 2021 | – | ||
| 2022 | – | ||
| 2023 | – | ||
| 2024 | |||
| 2025 | – | ||
| 2026 | – |
Net profit, Tokyo parent. ¥415bn over the ten years. 2026 includes a ¥23.8bn one-off gain.
Dividends paid out of it. Worked out from the change in retained earnings: only 2018 and 2024 show a payout (¥12bn in all, 2.9% of the decade’s profit); the other years show none. Dividends only: what the owners earn from business dealings with TPC is not measured here.
What it adds up to
Pokémon’s name belongs to its founders, its management belongs to The Pokémon Company, and licences run through the manager or, for merchandise in Japan, through ShoPro. That arrangement has kept the brand coherent across hundreds of partners and dozens of countries for almost thirty years, and it has kept the founders in control of what matters most. Its cost is a lock. The terms between owners and manager, whether a permanent licence or a mandate the owners could withdraw, appear in no public document, and no owner holds a majority. Selling or listing TPC would mean writing down, for the first time, who owns Pokémon.
No majority, but any two
Share of TPC’s votes. Only Nintendo’s is on record; the other two founders are assumed to hold equal shares.
- On record
- Assumed
- Any pair, above the 50% majority line
No owner can decide alone. Any two together can.
Built from and .Show the numbers
| Holder | On record, % of votes | Assumed, % of votes | Any pair, above the 50% majority line, % of votes | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nintendo | – | – | ||
| Second owner | – | – | ||
| Third owner | – | – | ||
| Any two owners together | – | – |
Assumed. The other two owners’ shares are unregistered; the trainer’s notes assumes the remaining 68% splits evenly. A very uneven split could give one owner a majority.
Any pair, above the 50% majority line. 64–68% under either the assumed 32/34/34 split or a vendor’s 32/32/32/4 split.