Nintendo isn’t a fan of third-party ROM releases. It has been quick to take action against fan-made edits or its original games’ files but that action was previously limited to DMCA notices and cease and desist orders. The company now appears to have adopted a more aggressive strategy as it’s now suing ROM sites.
TorrentFreak reports that Nintendo of America has filed a lawsuit against LoveROMs and LoveRetro. It’s seeking millions in damages from the websites as they serve its classic games’ files. The company calls it the “brazen and mass-scale infringement of Nintendo’s intellectual property rights.”
Websites like LoveROMs and LoveRetro are one-stop solutions for Nintendo fans as they host in-browser emulators and ROM downloads. The lawsuit filing includes interface explanations and screenshots to show how the users of these websites can gain access to thousands of Nintendo games and associated copyrighted works and images.
The company seeks “$150,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo copyrighted work and up to $2,000,000 for the infringement of each Nintendo trademark.” It also wants the full disclosure of the “receipts and disbursements, profit and loss statements, advertising revenue, donations and cryptocurrency revenue, and other financial materials,” of the operators of these websites.
Once the lawsuit was filed, LoveROMs updated its website to remove all Nintendo-related links, it has also taken down ROMs and emulators. LoveRetro now directs users to a single page which reads that “Loveretro has effectively been shut down until further notice.”
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