I don't know if I would claim hoax at this point.
It sounded like someone misunderstood how copyright/intellectual property law works and thought they saw a way to do something they actually could not, but it might have been nice for them if they could; there are a thousand small indy devs doing the current trend, which seems to no longer be small child in a dark and scary world/remaking NES Mario and instead early 3d platformers, and "get yourself some positive name recognition" is and has always been a good plan. If they don't have much invested in the business name then shut it down and come back as something else is a viable option (indeed see the history of Glover's various owners for name change fun and games) if they were otherwise going to be.
That said I just checked a trademark lookup and they don't have anything registered recently for it... I probably should have done that when I was checking the old ones. I don't know if it got withdrawn
If we are going deep into cynical territory it could have been an interest gauge/sales pitch by someone (either the current owners, someone looking to fund such a game or someone looking to buy it from the owners), and it certainly went wider than I would have expected a crowdfunding campaign to achieve at this point in time (most media outlets seem to have realised they are mostly scams and incompetence and thus not worth reporting on). If getting your fan game smacked down before suddenly releasing a version without all the infringing material (or otherwise using it to boost another project) is so successful at getting press then this is a nice twist on that. I have absolutely no evidence and don't even care to go looking.
So yes I can't claim hoax and further will pull you up on your choice to go there.
