Nintendo has filed a lawsuit through the federal court in the state of Arizona against the owner of 2 major ROM hosting sites, Jacob Mathias, and his Arizona-based company, Mathias Designs L.L.C. The company is being sued for unfair competition, as well as trademark and copyright infringement for featuring readily accessible retro ROMs, proprietary BIOS software, and copyrighted musical recordings and sounds.

This includes the copyrighted BIOS files for the Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Color, and Nintendo DS systems. Defendants also make a vast library of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s copyrighted musical works

These contents are reportedly uploaded and maintained directly by Mathias's company on a regular basis. In the motion, Nintendo also claims that the defendant is profiteering off of the popularity and subsequent ad-revenue of his sites, with one site regularly reaching over 17 million visitors per month. This is popularity gained, of course, exclusively from providing Nintendo's copyrighted content, that being both in the form of software as well as copyrighted visual logos to advertise the content.

Under the count of "unfair competition", Nintendo claims that:

Defendants’ conduct constitutes unfair competition that is contrary to honest practice in commercial matters under Arizona common law. Specifically, Defendants have traded on Nintendo’s reputation for quality and integrity in order to pass off their unauthorized copies of Nintendo video games and other copyrighted works to consumers. By advertising these copies as genuine Nintendo products, Defendants have actively misled consumers about the true source of these copies.

Nintendo is seeking compensation of $150,000 in statutory damages, on top of up to $2,000,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo trademark. Because there are more than 140 copyrighted titles and 40 trademarks reportedly being infringed, this could possibly result in upwards of $100 million in damages when totaled. In addition, they are demanding that Mathias provide them information on the sources of any and all infringing material hosted on his sites. Of course, Nintendo also seeks to shut both sites down with this motion. Mathias himself has yet to publicly respond to the allegations.

Source

 

[AutumnWolf]

They did it not because they were losing money, they just did it because they could

I hope you are happy now, Nintendo

 

[SirNapkin1334]

Welp, one thing’s for sure - this guy and his company is FUCKED.

 

[danabnormal9000]

Actually I love roms. And I love retro. Will Nintendo sue me?

 

[ov3rkill]

I guess Nintendo will be offering upcoming retro games, virtual console, emulation, or whatever rebrand they're planning with this move.

 

[pedro702]

Son of a bitch, they don't even sell anything gba related. This is just Nintendo being assholes. And yes I do understand that you have to protect your patents, but this is a weird case of Nintendo just messing with someone, look how they don't (and probably can't) do shit about the 100000 chinese websites.

nintendo does sell gba games on wiiu e shop vc titles and gb/gbc games on 3ds vc eshop so they actualy can loose money when people download roms and use the emulators instead of buying them on the shop.

 

[chrisrlink]

maybe they should sue the sources like Gamefly (who wants to bet most scene dumps are dumped using the said service for 15 a month you can probably dump 4-5 carts a month without drawing too much attention

 

[donut32]

Surely Mathias would have known the risks involved with running the site/company. Nintendo won’t get them all, but for them to make an example out of someone may be just to keep the fear that the risk is real.

 

[the_randomizer]

Good luck removing all the ROMs on the internet. If they did that, Nintendo wouldn't be able to use them for the digital services.

 

[chrisrlink]

maybe they should secure their servers first what idiots

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

Imagine in Anon got involved and crashed nintendo's servers for a week or 2 they have that shitty of security anyways

 

[FAST6191]

Good luck removing all the ROMs on the internet. If they did that, Nintendo wouldn't be able to use them for the digital services.

Again this is not going to be about removing all ROMs from the internet... Sisyphean does not even begin to cover that one. Such things are far more likely so that the clueless types which can just about follow a step by step guide (with pictures) on a forum don't have an easy route to grabbing ROMs.

Equally you seem to have a real thing about Nintendo (or indeed the group/company tasked with building them) grabbing an internet dump of a game. I am not entirely sure why though.

 

[k3rizz3k]

Wow, all this hate for a company doing what they should be doing. (Protecting their interests, money grabbing or not... That is the point of a for-profit company)

 

[Hells Malice]

Just Nintendo protecting its property as it is legally obligated to.
Anyone running sites like these knows the risks.

People getting mad at Nintendo are pretty braindead.

 

[The Real Jdbye]

Let's be real, Nintendo are never going to see most of that money.
The law is done in such a way that if you genuinely would never be able to pay all of that, then you get off easy.
That still probably means they have to give them all they have though.

 

[MarkDarkness]

If Nintendo was savvier they would understand that these operations at the end of the day generate them net revenue, not loss. Overwhelming attention has been given to the brand ever since the dawn of emulation, and without any doubt this has contributed greatly to them remaining alive and solvent.

Sure, it is their prerogative to "protect" that IP... it's just smarter that they don't.

PS: And anyway, this guy must have done something specific that upset them, because by and large they do get the point I made above and turn a blind eye.

 

[Sheimi]

Second time I have heard about the site. Hope they file for Bankruptcy

 

[Prior22]

Nintendo must be losing money somehow. Try doing more ports.

(This is sarcasm)

No sarcasm here. I would practically sell my soul for upgraded ports of Advance Wars 1-3, Dual Strike in particular.

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

No sarcasm here. I would practically sell my soul for upgraded ports of Advance Wars 1-3, Dual Strike in particular.

If it will stop the lawsuit then do it.

I was just joking about how company would be suing someone to gain money which is sometimes done more commonly in desperate greed rather than Sincerity. Of course I'm not saying that this is the case for this situation but it has happened before.

 

[Kigiru]

"It does nothing but maybe they will pay us" case.
Easier, more sue-proof and nearly impossible to take down way to host pirated stuff is torrent.
It's just a scapegoat case that will not end Nintendo's problems with pirates.

 

[AutumnWolf]

all nintendo content was removed from the site... and it feels kind of empty now

 

[SomeKindOfUsername]

Running your piracy site in someplace like the US while profiting off the distribution of copyrighted work is a very bad idea. They might get off lightly now that they've removed all the Nintendo stuff.

This might sound snobbish also, but if you're going to pirate at least do it right. There are so many better methods and alternatives than ad infested sites. And for the love of all that is holy don't pay for any 'premium membership,' that's just wrong on so many levels.