Nintendo seeks injunction after ROM site owner misses $50 damages payment

Nintendo is attempting to place a permanent injunction against the owner of a ROM site it successfully sued last month.

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In the lawsuit, the publisher and developer took ROM site owner Matthew Storman to court over damages caused by ROMUniverse. Storman’s website illegally shared ROM files online, which players could download and play.

Nintendo successfully won the case, and the judge ordered Storman to pay $2.15million in damages. Storman, who was and still is unemployed, agreed to pay $50 per month towards the amount.

The legal team representing Nintendo also requested the judge place a permanent injunction on Storman, preventing him from reopening ROMUniverse or creating additional ROM sites. The judge denied the injunction, citing Storman’s decision to close the site and Nintendo’s inability to show that it had suffered “irreparable harm”.

Storman’s inability to pay $50 a month pushed the publisher to seek a permanent injunction. The injunction motion, hosted by TorrentFreak, details how the defendant: “does not dispute that Defendant is considering relaunching the RomUniverse website to continue to distribute videogame ROMs.”

Nintendo leans on Storman’s inability to pay the damages as a need to place a permanent injunction: “This failure to make even the modest $50/month payment, an amount that he proposed and agreed to, demonstrates that Nintendo has no adequate remedy at law for Defendant’s past or future infringement and underscores the need for a permanent injunction.”

Nintendo officially won the case on May 26, and filed the request for an injunction just over a month later on June 29. That would mean Storman has likely missed one damages payment so far. It’s likely that Nintendo potentially expected this considering it filed the injunction a month and three days after it won the original case.

Elsewhere, Bandai Namco shared new gameplay details for the upcoming Elden Ring, after updating the game’s official page.

New details include the player’s ability to use the environment and weather to gain an advantage, and that there will be bogs, marshes, grassy and bushy areas.

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