Court Orders Rom Piracy Website To “Destroy” All Its Pirated Nintendo Games

A few years ago, Nintendo filed a lawsuit against the popular Rom piracy site RomUniverse, which eventually resulted in the site being shut down and the operators being ordered to pay out $2.1 million in damages in May 2021.

Following Nintendo’s victory, the court has now issued further penalties on the site operator in the form of a permanent injunction. The court had previously decided against issuing a permanent injunction, but has reversed their decision due to fears that the site may eventually make a comeback, and cause “irreparable harm” to Nintendo as a result:

“Plaintiff’s evidence demonstrates a threat of continued infringement based on Defendant’s representations that he may relaunch his website which previously contained Plaintiff’s copyrighted games. Accordingly, Plaintiff demonstrates irreparable harm warranting an injunction for Plaintiff’s copyright infringement claim.”

This new injunction specifically prohibits the site operator from “copying, distributing, selling and even playing unauthorized copies of Nintendo games” as well as “using Nintendo’s trademarks, logo’s or names in a ‘confusing’ manner”. Furthermore, the site operator has also been order to “permanently destroy all unauthorized Nintendo games or other unauthorized copies of Nintendo’s intellectual property including movies, books, and music no later than August 17, 2021”.

At the time of this writing, it is not known whether this order will finally being an end to RomUniverse, especially since the site operator previously admitted the site could make a comeback without any Nintendo games. If you would like to read the full version of the court’s order, you can find it here.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.