Nintendo Wins Lawsuit Against Piracy Site for $2.1 Million
The RomUniverse site operator defended himself in court before shutting down last year.
Back in 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against pirating site RomUniverse on the basis that it was profiting on copyright infringement by selling premium accounts to the site to access “1000s of game roms,
movies, isos and ebooks.” This included games from Nintendo platforms such as the Switch, Wii, 3DS, DS, and Game Boy Advance. Site operator Matthew Storman refused to shut down and defended himself in court without an attorney. But the whole thing didn’t work in his favor, and RomUniverse was shut down in the summer of 2020. The court case has officially ruled in Nintendo’s favor to the tune of $2.1 million in damages.
Yowza.
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TorrentFreak reports this is significantly lower than Nintendo’s original request, which would’ve been over $15 million. The company wanted $90,000 per copyrighted work hosted on the site, but the court went with $35,000 for each of the 49 copyrighted works. The court also was lenient when it came to trademark damages. Nintendo requested $400,000 for each of the 28 trademark infringements, but the court went with a total of $400,000 collectively. All of it added up to $2,115,000 in damages that Storman will have to pay Nintendo.
Anyway. Read this.
