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"Pokemon" Gene Renamed Date: 12/22/2005 |
| Gamasutra reports that researchers at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York have changed the name of a gene found to cause cancer, due to legal pressure from Nintendo's Pokemon USA. The gene, which has the formal name of POK erythroid myeloid ontogenic gene, was previously abbreviated as POKEMON, leading to media reports that compared the game with aspects of the disease, albeit in a lighthearted fashion. Scientific journal Nature reported that Pokemon USA, the subsidiary company of Nintendo established to control the Pokemon brand in America, threatened to sue the cancer research center on the understandable grounds that equating Pokemon with cancer was doing harm to the brand's image. Sloan-Kettering acquiesced to the company's demands and changed the gene's name to the more unobtrusive Zbtb7. |
| Source: Anime News Service |
