A marketing contractor of Yilan County Farmers' Association was asked to take off an online image the company created to promote Sanxing Township’s scallion because it bore a striking similarity to the wild duck Pokémon, Farfetch'd, Central News Agency (CNA) reported on Thursday (Aug. 29).
The contractor has created a Facebook fan page to help the county’s farmers promote their agricultural products. However, when the contractor put out the “Sanxing Duck” image on the fan page a few days ago, sharp-eyed netizens found that the image was suspected of copying the Pokémon creature, with only slight modifications. The V-shaped eyebrow of Farfetch'd was changed to three stars to represent the township, which is famous for scallion, and the one scallion stalk the online game creature is holding was changed to two.
A netizen commented, “It is obviously Farfetch'd! Do you really think that painting three stars in the head will turn it into Sanxing scallion? It looks more like the national flag of the country across the Taiwan Strait.”
Yilan County Farmers' Association Secretary General Chen Zhi-ming (陳誌銘) said Thursday that after netizens spotted the problem, the association notified the marketing company and asked them to take off the photo immediately.
The contractor apologized for creating the potential infringing content in a post on the association's Facebook page Thursday, saying they would monitor their creative production more carefully to prevent similar incidents from happening again, CNA reported.
The contractor also officially apologized to Nintendo, the company behind Pokémon GO, according to the news outlet.
By Taiwan News
