Paris’ Court of Appeals has recently awarded Nintendo a legal victory.
Per GamesIndustry, the court ruled that website operator Dstorage was liable for not blocking access to 1fichier, a site used to pirate Nintendo games. Nintendo had previously taken legal action against Dstorage in 2021 after it failed to comply with the developer’s requests to remove any and all unauthorized Nintendo games from 1fichier.
As a result of the new ruling, Dstorage has been ordered to pay a fine of €442,750 (roughly $484,000), along with Nintendo’s €25,000 in legal fees. The court informed Dstorage that it could appeal the ruling.
In a statement to GamesIndustry, Nintendo called the court ruling “significant not only for Nintendo, but also for the entire games industry.”
Nintendo racks up another court win
Over the decades, Nintendo has shown a willingness to take legal action against anyone who may infringe any of its work or businesses.
In several cases, that’s meant going after Pokémon leakers. Or more recently, that led to a suit against Kotiota Studios, an NFT developer claiming it previously worked on the franchise and is making a Pokémon NFT game.
There’s plenty of examples to choose from, but one of the more recent piracy-related ones dates back to 2019. Back then, a UK court ruled that five of the major ISPs in that country were legally required to block (or impede access) to websites that would allow for piracy on the Nintendo Switch.
A year prior to that, it’d won a copyright and trademark infringement case against emulation sites LoveRetro and LoveROMs. The owners of both sites had to pull all of Nintendo’s games from their respective rosters, and also pay $12.23 million to the Japanese console maker.