Nintendo has continued their fight against online piracy and to protect the company’s intellectual property rights, this time aiming their Super Scope at the LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites.
The lawsuit, which has been filed with the United States District Court for the District of Arizona, makes the unarguable claim that the websites “are built almost entirely on the brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights.”
The websites, which are believed to be owned by Jacob Mathias through his company Mathias Designs, are used by millions around the world to download video game ROMs for use with emulators.
Take a quick glance at the home page, and you can see that Pokémon Fire Red, Pokémon Emerald, Pokémon Black, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country and Mario Kart 64 rank among the most popular games that users are downloading.
“The LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites are among the most open and notorious online hubs for pirated video games,” Nintendo of America’s council writes.
“Through the LoveROMs and LoveRETRO websites, Defendants reproduce, distribute, publicly perform and display a staggering number of unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s video games, all without Nintendo’s permission. This includes thousands of games developed for nearly every video game system Nintendo has ever produced.”
In response, Nintendo is looking to be awarded “compensatory damages, including consequential and incidental damages, in an amount to be proved at trial.” Beyond that, they are seeking statutory damages in “up to $150,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo copyrighted work and up to $2,000,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo trademark.”
Nintendo has also requested that the domains www.LoveROMS.com, www.LoveRETRO.co and www.Roms4Droid.com are transferred to them, as well as other compensation be made – such as covering their legal costs.
Nintendo, you bastards, you did it again… 🙁
I find this completely stupid! I love loveROMS.com. it is the main site I go to download my Pokemon games for my emulator! This is just plain out stupid!
Still I don’t Understand your policy. You could have solved the problem many years ago when all it began selling a revised version of your classic consoles. You could have stopped the illegal downloading and contemporary sell a ton of consoles and games taking advantage of the coming to the market of the hdmi and usb tv. So why didn’t you think about it ?