Nintendo secures RCM loader ban in the U.S.
For anyone living in the United States, buying a RCM Loader just got much more difficult.
As you may have heard, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in November 2020 against Vietnamese resident Le Hoang Minh, who manufactured RCM Loaders and sold them on Amazon under the name "Winmart". This came after a DMCA takedown request from Nintendo, resulting in Amazon taking down his listings. Le disputed the request, allowing him to resume selling the devices. Nintendo called this an abuse of the DMCA's counternotification system, since Le lives in Vietnam, where any consequences for wrongly disputing DMCA takedowns are unenforceable. Due to this, Nintendo sought an injunction by a U.S. court. After the lawsuit was filed, Le did not respond to it, nor did Le enter discussions with Nintendo. This led Nintendo to seek a default judgment.
According to Nintendo, here is why the product is illegal:
On April 15, 2021, the U.S. court to which Nintendo brought the case has ruled in favor of Nintendo's request for a default judgment. Any online store selling RCM Loaders is now prohibited from shipping them to the U.S.Once this circumvention has occurred, the unauthorized CFW modifies the authorized Nintendo Switch operating system, thereby allowing users to obtain and play virtually any pirated game made for the Nintendo Switch. All of this happens without authorization or compensation to Nintendo or to any authorized game publishers
Nintendo is seeking a total of $2,500 in damages (down from their original request for $2,500 per violation) in an effort to not drag the litigation out much longer:
The injunction also applies to "any and all products, services, devices, components or parts thereof” that circumvent Nintendo's security measures. Does this mean that Le Hoang Minh (and anyone working with him) can't even sell paperclips?This request for a $2,500 award is intended to be very conservative and does not reflect anything close to the full amount of damages Nintendo could reasonably seek from Defendant,” the company writes.
Nintendo could…credibly seek a separate award for every device Defendant sold — almost certainly many devices, given that Defendant’s RCM Loader device was available online for many months. However, rather than attempt to quantify Defendant’s total sales, Nintendo seeks to facilitate an efficient resolution of this case through entry of judgment awarding damages for a single § 1201 violation.