In case you didn't know already, despite Nintendo's family-friendly games and cheery public persona, the company is a ruthless machine behind the scenes. As a giant in the industry, it does anything it can to protect its image and intellectual property, including sending cease and desists to fan projects, getting content creators to change their usernames, and suing organisations that infringe on their copyright.
Nintendo recently sued a ROM site, ROMUniverse, on the grounds of copyright infringement. Now, after winning the case and securing $2.1 million in damages, the developer has come back around with another filing to prevent the site from ever existing again, following the owner, Matthew Storman's failure to pay his first $50 dollars.
Nintendo's latest family-friendly first-party release is Mario Golf: Super Rush, which we also reviewed...
According to VGC, the creator and owner of ROMUniverse was ordered to pay Nintendo $2.1 million in damages after profiting off of copyright infringement. Because he was unemployed, it was agreed that he would pay off this debt in $50 USD instalments. But Storman has missed his first payment, and Nintendo is now using this failure to pay as fuel to further doom ROMUniverse.
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The game company sought in its original case to get a permanent injunction, preventing the site's future existence. However, because Nintendo couldn't prove ROMUniverse had created "irreparable harm", this was denied. Now Storman has missed his first payment, the company is using this as ammunition, claiming that the site owner wants to bring the site back later down the line, continuing to "mass-infringe Nintendo's copyright and trademark rights". It is therefore seeking the permanent injunction once again.
You can find the new case's paperwork hosted by TorrentFreak, to see for yourself how Nintendo is out for blood once again. At this point it seems trying to use anything Nintendo-related without its permission is more trouble than it's worth - you do not want your front door knocked on by Mario.
Featured Image Credit: Nintendo