Go-Kart and cosplay rental company MariCar has become the latest victim in Nintendo’s recent crackdown on supposed violations of its intellectual property.
Tokyo-based go-kart rental company MariCar has been successfully sued by Nintendo, resulting in them being barred from renting out Nintendo-themed cosplay outfits and forced to pay an undisclosed sum to the embattled multinational.
MariCar, which attracted some attention this year after a foreign karting enthusiast mowed down a cyclist on the streets of Tokyo, had built its business around allowing its customers to cosplay as characters from the Mario franchise and drive go-karts through the Japanese capital.
Nintendo took exception to this business model and sued the company on the grounds of copyright infringement and damage to Nintendo’s brand. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the courts sided with Nintendo, whose market capitalisation is currently around $60 billion.
According to a statement issued by the video game producer:
We intend to continue taking necessary measures to protect our company’s intellectual properties and brands, which were built up through many years of hard work, from actions that would damage them.
It’s sad because people actually enjoyed the entire experience cosplaying and go karting. If you’re a Mario Kart fan visiting Japan, you’d enjoy the s♥♥t out of doing stuff like that.
But people do make a good point, they are profiting off Nintendos IP. No company would sit back and watch you make $$$ off their work.
A lot of locals in Tokyo actually hate MariCar because of the foreigners doing stupid s♥♥t.
But they could have solved this in a better way.
They could have allowed them to use the name and characters for some of the profit. Free advertising for them and they get paid at the same time.
except they dont get payed, and people are causing accident while cosplaying as mario(brand’s damage), thus the lawsuit happen duhhhh dumbass
People cosplay as Nintendo characters every single day, in most of the cosplay events in most countries you would see at least 1 Nintendo character.
And Nintendo have already damaged their brand name when they started to sue every Youtuber that refuses to PAY them to put up videos of their games.
And then they do this, instead of working with them they sue them to bankruptcy making people jobless…
They damaged themself a long time ago, but instead of trying to repair the damage they only make it worse.
Yeah, you sad literal child, Nintendo did serious damage to themselves by shitting on jewtuber scum. Oh wait, that never happened because NO ONE EXCEPT AUTISMOS CARES ABOUT JEWTUBERS
That would be an even worse move to make. Any accident with these karts will be a direct link to the company. Like that run down cyclist.
Yes, it’s sad that you have Miyamoto’s tiny wang in your mouth to s♥♥t on fans who supports a franchise to the point of fandom. If they all did this to everyone. No one would support it. But hey, you gotta pump out those turds of words before EU anti-memes you all to death. Ahahahah!
This is actually one case where Nintendo not only had every right to take action here, but also would have been stupid if they didn’t take action.
well, I side with nintendo in this one.
One mofo runs over people dressed as a nintendo character of course it will damaging to nintendo’s brand.
They did that themself when they destroyed the company and made ever single person working there jobless.
Not to mention how they are trying to force Youtubers to PAY them for free advertising…
One-hundred percent agreed. I don’t believe the go-kart company was even paying a licensing fee or anything like that.
If they had an appropriate license, Nintendo wouldn’t have sued them, obviously.
People these fuckin days think that everything other people create is their own to run a goddamn business model on.
If you show up already dressed like a Mario character Nintendo can’t do s♥♥t then.
Set up a separate company to rent out costumes, and have the base company renting out carts similar to what they do now. Problem solved.
In which case you just sue both companies. And you’ve added collusion and conspiracy charges to boot!
when will italian plumbers sue nintendo for IP of their Italian plumbers style?
The company probably would have no problems if they only allowed the karts to run in a closed area. Letting people drive vehicles outside for fun would end in unrelated people being victims sooner or later and that would hurt Nintendo brand.