We have some distressing news.
The Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom: a visual compendium book campaign Kickstarter submitted by Miller Nash Graham and Dunn LLP has been stopped due to copyright issues.
Like many other people, we were super excited to see this book be published, it even received all the money it needed within the first day of being on the Kickstarter! But the big and powerful Nintendo can not take the sincerity of this amazing book, for what it is.
They are stating that copyrighted material was used in this book, and it has infringed upon what they feel is theirs and theirs alone to share with the world. Here’s the description of what they said on Kickstarter.
Nintendo Entertainment System/Famicom: a visual compendium
Description of copyrighted material: The copyrighted material includes images and fictional character depictions from Nintendo’s video games, including but not limited to, U.S. Copyright Reg. Nos. PA0000273028, supp. by PA0000547457 (Super Mario Bros.); PA0000427614, supp. by PA0000547456 (Super Mario Bros. 2); PA0000563454 (Super Mario Bros. 3); PA0000356140 (The Legend of Zelda); PA0000427613 (Zelda II – Adventure of Link); PA0000254906 (VS. Excitebike); PA0000260315 (VS. Hogan’s Alley); PA0000583907 (Yoshi(NES)); PA0000254151 (VS. Duck Hunt); PA0000366687 (Ice Hockey); PA0000356141 (Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out!!); PA0000564771 (Punch-Out!!); PA0000356142 (Metroid); and PA0000115040 (Donkey Kong). Publication of this book will further infringe these and other copyrights owned by Nintendo.
Description of infringing material: This Kickstarter project makes unauthorized use of Nintendo’s copyrights as noted above. The description of the book states that it is “mainly visual”, and the campaign shows pages of the book which consist simply of large screenshots copied directly from Nintendo’s video games. This campaign also makes use of a mark that is confusingly similar to registered trademarks owned by Nintendo. Specifically, the project’s creator is using a modified version of Nintendo’s “Official Nintendo Seal” mark (protected by U.S. Trademark Registration Nos. 3114368 (Class 16), 3117154(Class 28), 3173562(Class 9), and 1570911(Classes 16 and 28)) and Nintendo’s “Original Seal of Quality” mark (protected by EU Trademark Registration No. 3475977 (Classes 9, 16, 28) to promote this project. This use of Nintendo’s intellectual property may confuse Kickstarter backers into thinking this project is sponsored or licensed by Nintendo, when in fact it is not.
Now I feel that this is just bull shit by Nintendo and they should be ashamed. Doing this and not supporting what is clearly a labor of love for one of the best systems of days long past is just planning wrong or a least could have made a deal and took part of the profits.
Nintendo has done what I feel to be a bad move here. When they should be happy to see that the joy and love for the Nintendo, and goes farther then just their copyrights. This is indeed a sad day for the backers and for Miller Nash Graham and Dunn LLP who put their hard work into making the best book of its kind ever to be produced.
I want to know what you think please leave you comments on the bottom and lets talk about how you the fans feel about this and what should have been done differently.
I want to thank you for reading and remind you to keep doing it for the love of the game.