A man who snapped photos of unreleased Pocket Monsters from Pokemon Black & White before the game’s release has been taken into custody by Japanese police.
Back at the beginning of September, we caught our first glimpse of the then-unrevealed evolved forms of the Pokemon Black & White starters. Though gamers debated their authenticity for some time, they were eventually revealed to be the real deal when the game came out to rave reviews.
The guy who leaked some of that info in the first place, though? He’s not doing quite so hot: Makoto Sekiguchi of Yokohama is currently in police custody. The 27-year-old Sekiguchi took pictures of then-unreleased ‘mons such as Chaoboo – the first evolution of fire-pig Pokabu – with his mobile phone, and uploaded them to the internet at approximately 8:00 PM on September 1st. He is being charged with copyright infringement.
It’s unclear just which Pokemon Sekiguchi reportedly leaked, or if his photos are the ones that we originally posted on September 1st. The timing and specific content would seem to match up, but the only Pokemon character in question mentioned by name is Chaoboo – so there’s currently no way to be sure until more information is released.
While it is currently unknown how Sekiguchi obtained the images more than two weeks before the issue of Monthly CoroCoro Comic in question shipped, Chikusei City police are reportedly investigating the matter.
In his deposition, Sekiguchi said that he “thought [he] would show everyone the characters that haven’t been made public yet.” Hope it was worth it, man.
