Nintendo Sues Owner of 2 Prominent ROM-Hosting Sites

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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.

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sweis12

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Or they could just bring the virtual console back.. Why not let us buy mario 3 for a third time
Honestly, they really should just virtual console every game for the older platforms so people don't HAVE to pirate unless they wanna spend hundreds of dollars on consoles and games when they already have a switch.
 
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zeveroth

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Well this cat is going to get sued into oblivion. I've never heard of the site before though. I don't expect this to be the last one we hear about either. Nintendo is getting closer to their NSO service .I'm sure they want to crack down on these sites in hopes it'll drive more ppl to purchase a subscription to use said legacy games. If the guy is making $ off of them, he deserves Nintendo's wrath.
 

Zense

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As far as we know, this guy should be suing Nintendo for making a profit from soemthing they got off his site...

Jokes aside, funny how they first sue this guy now. It's like one of the first sites that pop up if you search for roms on google.
 
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mikey420

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I wonder if nintendo can also sue final users who use illegal roms:unsure:
In the United States they indeed can sue users of illegitimate titles. However the burden of proof is on the accessing party and good luck proving the content was actually obtained illegally. The dumps could have been made from your own personal collection. Simply put they are unlikely to to ever be able to catch someone using illegitimate copies. First of all they can't observe users actions on things other than Nintendo devices and even still use of unauthorized software on a 3ds or something is not actual proof of a crime as again the dumped game could be a backup of a personally purchased copy which you are perfectly allowed to make as a US citizen. In short your crimes are hard to prove meaning you have little to nothing to worry about.
 
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DarthDub

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Will Nintendo ever release ALL their games? We still don't have Joy Mecha Fight, Wrecking Crew '98, Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World, Tingle DS games, Captain Rainbow, the Panel de Pon games, Mother 3, all the FDS games, Color TV-Game 6, all the old Fire Emblem games, Alcahest, Custom Robo games, Daigasso! Band Brothers P, Starfy series, all the Wars games, BSX games, F-Zero Climax, any game that used the N64DD, Itoi Shigesato no Bass Tsuri No. 1 (SNES, N64), Kururin Squash!, Luigi's Mansion Arcade, Mario & Wario, Pokemon Card GB2: Team Great Rocket is Here!, Rhythm Tengoku, Shin Onigashima, Super Mario Fushigi no Korokoro Party (Mario Party Arcade), etc.
 

Vieela

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Could they also potentially take down the paradise website? Seems like Nintendo is taking down ROMs websites once again...
 
Last edited by Vieela, , Reason: I accidently "linked" a rom website. Sorry for that.

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