Nintendo is set to file a lawsuit against another ROM site, ROMUniverse, after taking LoveROMS.com and LoveRETRO.co to court for a $12 million dollar lawsuit last November.
Nintendo is currently seeking damages for the amount of $150,000 per each copyright infringement, and up to $2 million for each trademark infringement. This totals to a huge lawsuit, as according to the suit, RomUniverse boasts nearly 60,000 ROMs available for download.
The site has a huge selection of gaming ROMs including Nintendo games, as well as movies and books.
Polygon has provided details of the lawsuit, hosting the full 19 pages of the suit against the site on their website. The opening page provides information of the popularity of the site, gaining over 300,000 downloads of illegal copies of Nintendo games, 300,000 downloads of pirated Nintendo Switch games and over 500,000 copies of pirated Nintendo 3DS games;
Defendant Matthew Storman and persons of unknown identity (“Defendants”) own and operate the website www.romuniverse.com (the “Website”) built largely on brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’sintellectual property rights. The Website is among the most visited and notorious online hubs for pirated Nintendo video games. Through the Website, Defendants reproduce, distribute, monetize, and offer for download thousands of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video games. This includes games for nearly every videogame system Nintendo has ever produced including hundreds of games for its recently released Nintendo Switch. According to the Website, as of the date of filing this Complaint, hundreds of thousands of copies of Nintendo games have been illegally downloaded through the Website including nearly 300,000 downloads of copies of pirated Nintendo Switch games and more than 500,000 copies of pirated Nintendo 3DS games.
Nintendo appears to be seriously cracking down on the issue of piracy. Only just this week, Nintendo was able to win a case in the United Kingdom that requires five internet service providers; Sky, BT, EE, Talktalk, and Virgin Media, to block access to various websites that offered illegal Nintendo Switch game ROMs. This was done to protect developers from having games pirated and to encourage legal purchasing of the game.
