Pokemon Gene Renamed Under Legal Threat

Posted by Zonk on Tuesday December 20, 2005 @04:42AM from the tumor-i-choose-you dept.

Gamasutra reports that the 'Pokemon' cancer-causing gene has been renamed after legal threats were made by Pokemon USA. From the article: "Scientific journal Nature reported that Pokémon USA, the subsidiary company of Nintendo established to control the Pokémon brand in America, threatened to sue the cancer research center on the understandable grounds that equating Pokémon 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."

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Good. by rainwalker · 2005-12-20 05:57 · Score: 2, Interesting

Good, there's nothing more annoying when reading literature than genes given "cute" names by researchers trying to be funny. Name it after the function, so we don't have to keep looking it back up! I'm all for using the courts to force researchers to name genes properly, dammit!