The Nintendo Legal Department wins another round

The recent courtcase between Nintendo and the web hosting company Dstorage has came to a verdict in the Paris court, the case is closed with Nintendo winning the lawsuit.

Prior to this, Nintendo has requested Dstorage to remove any unauthorized Nintendo game files found on their site, and Dstorage had failed to comply by then. And this has led to Nintendo taking the legal approach to resolve the issue. The previous courtcase on May 2021 ended similarly with Dstorage losing the lawsuit.

As a result, Dstorage will have to pay 442,750 EUR to Nintendo as compensation to their loss, and pay the legal feels of 25,000 EUR, and Dstorage can appeal against this outcome.

Nintendo has then posted an announcement stating that the court has judged Dstorage to be responsible but didn’t take action to remove, delete or stop people from utilising Dstorage as a loading spot for the transfer of illegal pirated game files on file sharing websites such as 1fichier.com, which has already violated the rights and interests of Nintendo.

As quoted by Gameindustry biz, the statement is as follow:

「Nintendo is pleased with the decision of the Paris Court of Appeals, as it again sends a clear message that in refusing to remove or withdraw access to unauthorised copies of video games despite prior notification, sharehosting services such as Dstorage (1fichier) are liable under French law and must remove or block access to such content and may be liable to pay compensation to those rights holders whose intellectual property rights have been infringed」

「The Court’s finding of liability against Dstorage is significant not only for Nintendo, but also for the entire games industry. It will prevent sharehosters like 1Fichier from claiming that a prior decision from a court will be needed before pirated content has to be taken down, and additionally the Court decision confirms what rights holders have to give notice of when claiming that notified content infringes copyright or trademark rights」