author: Angelika Kaldus
RomUniverse Website Owner Loses to Nintendo; Will Pay Millions
Nintendo has won in court against the owner of the RomUniverse website, who was accused of copyright infringement. Now, Matthew Storman must pay millions of dollars.
- Nintendo won a lawsuit for copyright infringement against the owner of the RomUniverse website;
- Matthew Storman must pay the Japanese company $2.1 million.
In September 2019, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against RomUniverse website owner Matthew Storman for downloading and distributing pirated versions of its games. He was also accused of enriching himself through copyright infringement. Storman did not admit to any of the alleged actions and decided to fight Nintendo in court. It's worth noting that he didn't hire a lawyer for this purpose.
Even before the case was concluded, in the summer of last year, the owner agreed to close RomUniverse, despite the fact that was fiercely defending his innocence. During the trial the court concluded, however, that Storman was guilty of willful and direct copyright infringement - furthermore, he had made unauthorized use of Nintendo's trademarks, as well as enriched himself by charging users for better access to content on the platform. In 2019, this was his main source of income. This is what judge Marshall said about Storman's testimony:
“Defendant filed a declaration in opposition to the Motion wherein he declares that he ‘denies and disputes that he uploaded any files to said website and at no time did he verify the content of said ROM file’, which is directly contradictory to his sworn deposition testimony wherein he testified that he uploaded the ROM files onto his website.”
Nintendo asked for $ 15 million in damages for its losses, but the final amount that the court will order Storman to pay will be $2.1 million. This value was determined, among others, based on the infringement of copyrights to 49 titles and the use of 28 forged trademarks.