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

 

[Viri]

So, how fucked are those 2 guys? Also, I never even heard of their website.

 

[mattytrog]

Better off going to Cuba or Russia while they can...

 

[phreaksho]

Geez... you would think that these guys would go after people distributing the newer stuff..

 

[Darth Meteos]

This site was like my... I wanna say third... place to check for ROMs. Christ, what do I do, now?!

 

[Sonic Angel Knight]

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

(This is sarcasm)

 

[tomGER]

Geez... you would think that these guys would go after people distributing the newer stuff..

I'd guess that finding the owner of that site was "easy" when compared to those sharing newer content.

 

[dmace81]

Yet thousands of rom websites still exist. Good luck taking them all down Nintendo. So stupid. Im glad I hacked my 3ds so I can get games free now. I supported Nintendo enough through the years rebuying the same games over and over. All I see in them is greed now. If they want people to quit downloading roms then make 30+ year old games cheaper than 5 to 10 dollars.

 

[Song of storms]

What were they supposed to do? Let them host their games for free? Companies must protect their own stuff or they give free ground for people to do anything they want with them. Why do you think that Game Freak actively shuts down Pokemon fangames? For fun?

These idiots hosted a warez website in Arizona, something that you can't just swipe under the rug. Had they hosted it in Panama or another country where the authorities don't care, they would've gotten away with it. This is just playing stupid games and winning stupid prizes.

 

[Jiehfeng]

So what happens to him now? Surely he doesn't have that much money with him?

 

[Song of storms]

So what happens to him now? Surely he doesn't have that much money with him?

With 17 million visitors per month? It's safe to say that he got at least $10k per month.

 

[Kioku]

The one place I could get my Xbox games without adfly. RIP

 

[gman666]

Good rom sites come and go.. That's exactly why I have complete romsets stored on a few drives. I'd like to avoid finding new sites everytime companies send out cease and desist orders.

 

[Captain_N]

Yet thousands of rom websites still exist. Good luck taking them all down Nintendo. So stupid. Im glad I hacked my 3ds so I can get games free now. I supported Nintendo enough through the years rebuying the same games over and over. All I see in them is greed now. If they want people to quit downloading roms then make 30+ year old games cheaper than 5 to 10 dollars.

I bet they will go after that paradise site also. they have better stuff. You would think they would be going after the sites that host links for switch roms as well as the cloud storage used the roms. They could just sit there all day reporting all the links. Really all these sites just need to be in Russia.

 

[Deleted User]

So, how fucked are those 2 guys? Also, I never even heard of their website.

Proper fucked Turkish. Like the rabbit.

 

[Ericthegreat]

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.

 

[CORE]

How sad when Nintendo cant sell you the same thing over and over because it freely available although you bought once before however Legal it is Greedy.

 

[Song of storms]

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.

It's a lot easier to sue someone infringing your copyrighted material in a place like the USA than in a place like China. That's why the owner of these two websites would've gotten away with it if he hosted them someplace else.

 

[CORE]

SOB!!! I just discovered that site and was very useful dammit Nintendo u A**holes. It had games that I never knew existed.

 

[Arras]

So what happens to him now? Surely he doesn't have that much money with him?

File for bankruptcy, probably.