The Japanese video game company Imagineer has issued a statement on its website, declaring victory in the fight for the Medabots trademark in Europe, after a long battle against Kevin Comadrán de Frutos.
Medabots, in case you're unfamiliar, is a long-running Japanese multimedia series comprised of games, manga, and an animated TV show.
It originally debuted all the way back in 1997 with the release of the Natsume-developed Game Boy RPG of the same name, about collecting and battling the titular robots, and has, over the decades, garnered a string of successful sequels, ports, spin-offs, and collections across a wide range of different platforms. This includes games for handheld devices like the Wonderswan, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS, and 3DS, to consoles like the original PlayStation and Nintendo Gamecube, and console/handheld hybrids like Nintendo Switch.
In the past, only a small handful of these titles have ever officially been made available in North America and Europe, but that still hasn't stopped the series from generating a pretty loyal following from those who have come across the series back in the day, or who managed to catch its TV show in the early 2000s.
The legal dispute between Imagineer and Comadrán, which has now concluded, according to Imagineer, has been going on for several years now, and all seems to stem from an event that took place back in 2018, when Comadrán filed for the Medabots trademark in Europe, having noticed the trademark in the region had lapsed.
This subsequently prevented Imagineer from publishing any Medabots games within Europe under the series's name, while Comadrán essentially tried to hijack the IP, launching their own dubious Medabot projects, including a failed Medabots IndieGoGo and a heavily criticized project based around a cryptocurrency named 'Medacoin'.
In the statement, Imagineer wrote about the legal battle:
"Regarding the judgment announced in our press release dated September 25, 2023, "Notice regarding the favorable ruling in the Spanish lawsuit (second instance) regarding the 'MEDABOTS' trademark," the opposing party (Kevin Comadrán de Frutos) appealed, but we are pleased to announce that the Spanish Supreme Court dismissed the appeal on October 29, 2025, and the judgment in our complete victory has been finalized.
We will continue to work to protect legitimate intellectual property rights and develop a healthy content business."
Perhaps this means we'll finally be able to get a rerelease of some of the classic Medabot games in the future. Maybe even a Medabots collection, like the one released on Switch in Japan. We don't know about you, but we have our fingers crossed for more news in the future.