Crime doesn’t pay, and if that crime involves leaking Pokemon strategy guide pages it can result in a massive fine for anyone involved.
As VGC reports, the Western District of Washington Court has found two men (David Andino Maisonave and Bryan Garcia Cruz) guilty of violating both the Defend Trade Secrets Act and Washington Uniform Trade Secrets Act. Their crime was to leak pages from the official Pokemon Sword and Shield strategy guide prior to its launch, and in the process revealed details about new Pokemon neither Nintendo or The Pokemon Company had discussed publicly yet.
Maisonave was the first to act, he captured photos of the strategy guide while working at printing company LSC Communications, which had been tasked with producing the guides for Nintendo. The pages included information about the game that wasn’t publicly known yet, including a new Gigantamax Machamp Pokemon, which Maisonave shared with a friend.
Cruz was the second person to act. Maisonave’s friend decided to post the images of the strategy guide in a Discord group Cruz was a member of, and he subsequently shared them online allowing a much wider audience to learn of the new details ahead of the official reveal. It didn’t take long for the information to spread across social media.
Nintendo is well-known for taking legal action against individuals who decide to infringe its IP, steal its property, or in this case, leak private information, but it was The Pokemon Company that took the lead here. Following an investigation by the company, which as Forbes reported back in 2019, hired forensic experts to help track down the source of the leak, both men were ultimately identified and prosecuted. Maisonave and Cruz must now raise $150,000 each to pay monetary damages, attorneys’ fees, and costs.
