I’ve honestly never heard of this channel before, but this just seems dumb. It’s like free advertising for Nintendo.
As usual Nintendo goes legally overboard for really no good reason at all. In this case honestly I don’t even understand why Nintendo wasted their time. It’s a YouTube channel, not a competitor.
The whole video is worth watching and the channel is great, but here’s the TL;DW.
When Nintendo released Donkey Kong in America in 1981, Universal Pictures sued them for copyright infringement on that grounds that Donkey Kong was too similar to Universal’s King Kong. Nintendo won because their lawyer, named Kirby, pointed out that back in 1933, RKO pictures successfully proved that the novel King Kong was public domain, so they didn’t have to pay the author any royalties or licensing rights.
While they won, the experience was traumatic for Nintendo of America at the time. They were not lawyers; they were mostly Japanese programmers and engineers, and they really didn’t want to go through such a costly legal case again. The solution was to aggressively defend their own brand so that nobody would ever be in any doubt as to who owns the copyright and trademarks.
Oh, and then there’s money. Nintendo have some of the most valuable IPs on Earth; other companies would kill for just one thing as popular and recognisable as Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, StarFox, or even Metroid, let alone Pokémon. People also bring up that they’re loaded, and that’s true, but Nintendo’s war chest isn’t anywhere near as big as the likes of Sony and Microsoft. In a protracted legal battle, Nintendo would run out of money first, so again, their solution is to aggressively attack anything that could remotely weaken their own brand so as to stave off bigger legal battles in the future.
eh, a lot of people have been Pokémon fans since childhood before they gave very much thought to such things as “advertising” or “copyright” or “corporations”, and we find things like this entertaining. I think I may even have watched some of that channel’s videos at some point, though am not sure whether I may be confusing it with another one.
I’ve honestly never heard of this channel before, but this just seems dumb. It’s like free advertising for Nintendo.
As usual Nintendo goes legally overboard for really no good reason at all. In this case honestly I don’t even understand why Nintendo wasted their time. It’s a YouTube channel, not a competitor.
There’s a backstory!
The whole video is worth watching and the channel is great, but here’s the TL;DW.
When Nintendo released Donkey Kong in America in 1981, Universal Pictures sued them for copyright infringement on that grounds that Donkey Kong was too similar to Universal’s King Kong. Nintendo won because their lawyer, named Kirby, pointed out that back in 1933, RKO pictures successfully proved that the novel King Kong was public domain, so they didn’t have to pay the author any royalties or licensing rights.
While they won, the experience was traumatic for Nintendo of America at the time. They were not lawyers; they were mostly Japanese programmers and engineers, and they really didn’t want to go through such a costly legal case again. The solution was to aggressively defend their own brand so that nobody would ever be in any doubt as to who owns the copyright and trademarks.
Oh, and then there’s money. Nintendo have some of the most valuable IPs on Earth; other companies would kill for just one thing as popular and recognisable as Mario, Zelda, Animal Crossing, Splatoon, StarFox, or even Metroid, let alone Pokémon. People also bring up that they’re loaded, and that’s true, but Nintendo’s war chest isn’t anywhere near as big as the likes of Sony and Microsoft. In a protracted legal battle, Nintendo would run out of money first, so again, their solution is to aggressively attack anything that could remotely weaken their own brand so as to stave off bigger legal battles in the future.
“you were having fun without paying us? this cannot stand.”
eh, a lot of people have been Pokémon fans since childhood before they gave very much thought to such things as “advertising” or “copyright” or “corporations”, and we find things like this entertaining. I think I may even have watched some of that channel’s videos at some point, though am not sure whether I may be confusing it with another one.