Nintendo has won another dispute with the owner of the pirate site -apkrig
Less than two years ago, we briefed you on a lawsuit between Nintendo and ROMUniverse. There were over 60,000 ROMs of various titles for various platforms in the database of this website, of which about 3,200 belonged to Nintendo. Given Japan’s proactive approach to this, it was therefore expected that it would not leave such an important portal unnoticed and indeed – in a lawsuit, it originally claimed $ 150,000 for each copyright infringement and up to $ 2 million for any copyright infringement. stamps. However, the authors of the site were not afraid and very boldly turned to customers asking for a financial contribution so that they could defend ROMUniverse and its rights. It was difficult to judge what rights they were talking about, but Judge Consuelo Marshall was clear and her verdict was expected to be in Nintendo’s favor.
He was forced to close the site last summer, but that did not end the dispute, and Nintendo sought $ 15 million in damages.
According to TorrentFreak magazine, defendant Matthew Storman initially denied all allegations of piracy and illegal software distribution. In addition, he opted for his own defense without the presence of any lawyer, claiming that his site had never violated any prohibition. He therefore asked the court to close the whole case, but he continued to deal with it, and the first signals began to come that it would not turn out well for Storman. He was forced to close the site last summer, but that did not end the dispute, and Nintendo sought $ 15 million in damages. “This is a clear case of video game piracy, the evidence is indisputable,” Nintendo’s lawyers argued, also pointing to Storman’s nature. business. “The defendant has owned and operated the ROMUniverse website for more than ten years. He filled this site with pirated copies of thousands of different Nintendo games and distributed hundreds of thousands of these copies to customers, ”adds Nintendo.
Despite the fact that the site boasted of the number of titles available before the lawsuit, Storman disagreed with the court, refused to download illegal copies through ROMUniverse, and tried to explain that he himself definitely did not upload any games to the server. However, this was contrary to his previous statements, which Judge Marshall pointed out several times, which is why she eventually sided with Nintendo. However, the gaming company provided sufficient additional evidence to show that Storman was liable for direct and co-caused copyright infringement and, in addition, for trademark infringement claims. According to the court, Storman profited from the website, and in 2019 alone, ROMUniverse was able to generate revenue of up to $ 36,000.
Nevertheless, the court was mild to the operator of the portal in terms of financial compensation and instead had to pay $ 90,000 for each copyright infringement in the end. just $ 35,000. For the 49 games at issue, Storman has to pay a total of $ 1.7 million, but he still has to add $ 400,000 for trademark infringement. Here, Storman was threatened with an astronomical amount for every one violation, which in the end the court did not consider adequate. The former ROMUniverse operator is currently unemployed and the need to pay over $ 2 million will be a sufficient deterrent to other similar activities, according to Judge Marshall. In addition, Nintendo has not been able to prove that the pirate site would cause irreparable damage and that there will be no further infringement of rights due to the closure of the operation.
