Back in 2019, Nintendo filed suit against ROM website RomUniverse, and the case has now concluded in Nintendo’s favor.
Nintendo stated that this was a “straightforward video game piracy case” and said that for over a decade, the site was full of pirated copies of “thousands of different Nintendo games and distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of those pirated games.” In addition, they noted that RomUniverse also sold paid premium accounts, which allowed users to download an unlimited amount of titles. Site owner Matthew Storman, denied that RomUniverse provided pirated ROMs and also stated that he himself never uploaded any games. That said, Storman did admit in a previous deposition that he uploaded content to the site.
In the end, US District Court Judge Consuelo Marshal mostly sided with Nintendo and accepted trademark infringement claims.
“Defendant filed a declaration in opposition to the Motion wherein he declares that he ‘denies and disputes that he uploaded any files to said website and at no time did he verify the content of said ROM file’, which is directly contradictory to his sworn deposition testimony wherein he testified that he uploaded the ROM files onto his website. Furthermore, Defendant testified at his deposition that his website ‘indicated’ that copies of Nintendo’s copyrighted video games were available for download on the website.”
Judge Marshal ruled that $35,000 statutory damages for each of the 49 copyrighted works is enough, which comes to $1.7 million, while Nintendo was looking for $90,000 per work. In addition, while the company had also requested $400,000 for each of the 29 trademarks, it will instead receive $400,000 for all combined.
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