Dex pulled from the App Store
It was with sadness I found out this morning that Dex, my beloved Pokemon browser for iOS, was pulled from the App Store. Nintendo legal had been sending copyright notices to Apple for some time and while I tried to have a conversation with Nintendo to work something out they weren’t very talkative.
To the best of my knowledge this isn’t part of a larger plan of Nintendo or The Pokémon Company to lock down their intellectual property. While they continue to turn a blind eye to fan sites like Bulbapedia, Serebii, Marriland and Smogon they seem to really dislike apps serving the same data sets such as my own Dex, Timothy Oliver’s iPokedex and Nolan Lawson’s Pokédroid.
I suspect part of this is because they view these devices as competition against their own struggling handheld platform. Additionally Apple’s distribution is centralized making it that much easier to shut things down.
I’ve read a lot on the topic of Selective Copyright Enforcement and the legality/benefits of fan sites over the past few months. I’m not really prepared to do a larger write up only to say I think a move like this was in the disinterest of Pokémon fans and the Pokémon brand.
If you’d like to let your disagreement with this action be heard I’d recommend sending respectful feedback to The Pokemon Company directly. My contact there was:
Kim Warren
k.warren@pokemon.com
Paralegal
The Pokémon Company International
333 108th Ave NE, Suite 1900
Bellevue, WA 98004
United States
+1.425.274.4895
legalnotices@pokemon.com
To all the Dex fans out there, thank you so much for your support and well wishes over the last year. I’m happy I was able to improve your experience of the great Pokémon franchise.
Posted on: December 6, 2011 – 3:57 PM
Hi. My name is Mike Zornek (
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