Hackinformer Your device needs to transform, we are here to inform
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.
When Nintendo’s dead in the near future maybe they can try again. With how self destructive they’ve been with their decisions as of late, it’s only a matter of time. lol
Actually, it’s on the individuals creating the kickstarter campaign to reach out to Nintendo BEFORE starting the campaign. They didn’t do that. I hate to say it, but Nintendo has the right to shut it down.
It’s not Nintendo’s legal team’s job to broker a deal that can be mutually beneficial, but the campaign creator’s. Nintendo is in the right. Maybe the campaign creators will try to reach out to Nintendo to legitimize the campaign, and actually be able to add the real seal of quality onto the compendium.
People want to hate the big guys, but in this situation, the big guys are the good guys.
Nintendo created the original games, and still maintain the patents to this day for the games, and their characters, and the likenesses thereof.
It’s a shame the kickstarter backers got caught in the crossfire, but this is like getting pissed off at authorities from stopping smugglers, when instead the smugglers could have contacted the proper authorities, paid the appropriate fees, and not only ship in their product, but even enlist the help of the authorities in this case to further distribute product.
Being within your legal right is fine and all, but I still find this morally objectionable. Guess when you’re rich you don’t have to worry about morals though. I doubt this would hurt Nintendo in anyway, in fact, I think shutting the project down will hurt their image a bit with that in mind. Flexing a legal muscle just, because you can doesn’t always turn out well. http://kotaku.com/blizzard-says-they-had-to-shut-down-world-of-warcraft-f-1773089312
Plenty of messed up things been legal in human history.
Also, that analogy makes the creators of the book look worse than they really are just for making a passion filled project.
Personally wouldn’t be suprised if Nintendo steal this idea and make it them selves for full profit.
Why was this book even interesting? They blatantly copy screencaps into their book that takes up the entire page and write a tiny blurb about the game, meaning Nintendo is pretty much the main writer of this book. If all the pages are like those shown, then Nintendo is almost the complete creator or copyright holder or publisher of almost all of the content in there. It would be like someone making a compendium of DC comics and reusing the exact artwork from the comic without getting DC’s permission. You can’t even legally sell fan artwork of this kind of stuff, much less the actual original art.
The book was a walk down the paths we all went down over the years with nintendo and was showing off the art of the dev who made this system one of the best system’s ever made. It was a passion filled project of the love they and many others shared of this system and was an amazing book. It only help to show how these games changed the game industry for ever it would have been the best book in any ones collection but now it may never be 🙁
I am a little confused how exactly would Nintendo have any copy rights if it was not for their developers making them money? Also how did a card game company become so famous anyway? I hope the NX fails maybe then they will change making under powered systems.
It going to happen the same thing like the dreamcast. Nintendo will be out of the market making consoles.