A popular Japanese company that let you live out your childhood dreams and race karts dressed as Mario and company are being sued by Nintendo for Copyright Infringment.
The go karting firm that goes by the name "Maricar" lets anyone that holds a Japanese driving license race around public roads suited up as characters Mario, Luigi, Peach, Toad, Yoshi, Wario and Bowser. Lawyers have been called in by Nintendo as it believes its intellectual property is being infringed upon; looking at these photos it should come as no shock why.
The news was announced in a press release by Nintendo, translated below.:
In this lawsuit, against the defendant company which provides rental services for public road carts, we have declared the mark 'Marika', which is an abbreviation of 'Mario Kart' widely known as the series of racing games that we manufacture and sell.
In addition, when the defendant company rents a public road cart to that customer, they lend a costume of a famous character such as our 'Mario', etc., and the image and the video of the costume are displayed.
They use it for publicity and sales without obtaining our permission, and we insist that such an act falls under unfair competition and copyright infringement acts against us.
For a closer look at Maricar you can follow this link.
What do you think about Nintendo's actions in this case? Fair enough or over-zealous?
[source nintendo.co.jp, via eurogamer.net]
Comments 55
Spoilsports!
Same old grumpy Nintendo.
However, in this case (unlike with AM2R) I can understand where they are coming from especially since they are now getting into the real life attraction market with their deal with Universal.
I can see where they're coming from with this. If someone gets hurt driving one of these things wearing a Mario costume it's Nintendo that'll get the bad PR even though they had nothing to do with it.
Surely they had to have seen this coming...
Yeah, that's a pretty blatant infringement. Nintendo definitely gets a lot of (mostly deserved) flak for being over zealous with protecting their copyrights, but i don't think you can argue that Nintendo is being unreasonable here.
Erm, they must of known this would happen, if not they deserve it
I bet people will still act like Nintendo are bullies here...
Free advertising for Nintendo and they get to sue someone, wow!
Change the name and they'll be fine... Nintendo can't exactly complain about costume rental and go-karting.
Kind of a shame, but...yeah, that's pretty blatant.
Nintendo SHOULD do this themselves Or buy the company, make the founder rich for doing all the front-end work and then call it Nintendo Presents Real Life Mario Kart!
Or just negotiate a royalty. I get how carefully they protect their IP's. It's their cash cow.
I love the provided picture. Everyone looks so happy and then there's yoshi haha.
How this is in direct competition with Nintendo is beyond me. You can dress up as any character, not just Nintendo ones (as this article misleadingly implies). Nintendo will be going after any kind of cosplay next.
I'm surprised they didn't just send in the Yakuza.
I think it's understandable. There are all sorts of risks and concerns with these people racing all over the place on public roads...god knows how it's even legal because you'd never get away with it here in the UK. But they're using Nintendo characters, people are going to associate it with the company even if Nintendo have nothing to do with it. Say there's an accident, or a death...Nintendo's image is connected to this in a way that makes it look as if they are behind it. It's not hard to see why Nintendo want to distance themselves from it and file a copyright claim to get them to stop using their characters.
Just stick to racing karts normally...if you want to bring along your own outfits there might be a track near you that will allow it. But not a company specifically advertising themselves as Mario Kart.
@RainbowGazelle
They'll eventually just cause the entirety of Comiket to shut down, I bet. They've let it go for so long now, but I can see today's Nintendo destroying it eventually.
Nintendo Ninjas don't play around. Soon there will charged applied just for saying their name. Nintendo = $100.00 garnish...
Seriously though, it is what it is..
Can't say I blame them, but it'll be a shame not to see these on the streets of Tokyo anymore if it goes that way - always an amazing sight and has everyone taking photos!
posted image
@Baker1000
Ah... I see.
Nintendo is fear if their brand misused by peoples for bad purpose or by accidentally cause bad accidents. If something bad happens because of Nintendo label, Nintendo will get sued first for causing troubles. That's why Nintendo is very concern about their brand image, oftenly they don't hesitate to sue. I guess...
I get it. Plus, with the new amusement park stuff on the way, why would Nintendo want to lose any business to another company.
It's not the act but the profit that's getting them in trouble. If it was free Nintendo obviously wouldn't bother.
@SLIGEACH_EIRE How is it being a spoilsport to protect IP that is worth billions of yen?
@Anti-Matter I'm not sure if you're being sarcastic or not? People won't try and sue Nintendo because it's not their company, but they don't want this sort of publicity if something happens while people are driving around dressed as their characters, pretending to replicate one of their best known games. If they weren't profiting off the image of Nintendo's characters Nintendo couldn't really do a lot about it. People do dumb stuff dressed as Mario elsewhere, I don't doubt. But the fact they're making money off of an IP which is copyrighted is very much something Nintendo can put a stop to. Besides, if Nintendo ever want to do something similar...say, a certain theme park they've recently been investing money into, they can't have people offering a similar experience that they aren't making money from themselves.
Now I want to see Golf with people renting Mario costumes
@Baker1000
I was not being sarcastic.
I just understand why Nintendo being so strict about their brand.
They have to keep their brand image stay away from misused.
Sorry if you misunderstood my comment just now.
sigh It sucks that this is the way the world works. But... no blame to Nintendo for this one.
On the one hand, I can see their concern as they are moving into real world amusement experiences. On the other, I just don't know that this was a) a threat or b) that it in any way hurt their brand. This is a bit of an overreach, imho. I won't go so far as to call it bullying, but I really don't see how it was necessary.
@JunkRabbit
Ah... yes.
Also, some other English words in Katakana Japanese also simplified into simple syllables like Building -> BiRuDinGu but oftenly spelled BiRu or Television -> TeReBiShon but oftenly spelled TeReBi.
With the profits and name, Nintendo basically needed to take this down. It sucks, but I can understand the reasoning behind it.
@InternetBowser
could set a bad precedent i guess. haha. "use mario without permission and get rich!"
I still don't know how Nintendo haven't discovered this game that is continually advertised on YouTube. It's called Wow Monster and is on the Google Play Store for free. Have a look. From the adverts and screenshots I've seen, it uses all the same names, sprites, monsters, characters and music as the Pokemon games. Shameless!
@KingOfTheFools Nintendo normally doesn't handle the Pokémon brand. The Pokémon Company was set up to do so (though it is still strange that the Pokémon Company hasn't done anything about it then).
Clapped eyes on this last Halloween. I'd heard about it before, but it was interesting to view it in the flesh.
The driving standard wasn't... perfect, and they were given a sensibly wide berth by most other road users, but was fun in a (largely) harmless, anarchic sort of way.
It'd be a shame if it gets wiped out (probably), as it's always sweet to see nerds out in the open air, but we'll see. Maybe they can just be more covert.
After all, if Nintendo wanted to stop people dressing up as Mario characters, they'd pretty much have to ban Halloween in Tokyo. The only difference was that these guys were in karts (oh, and, err... backed by an actual company).
@JHDK Any huge company would do the same. If anybody gets injured using this service and it hits the news, it impact Nintendo.
Just like any other case, it's Nintendos franchise, so I can't blame them for protecting it.
No surprise here. This time I think they are in their right though.
@RainbowGazelle hahahahaha! Good one. That was a good, good joke. Classic rainbowgazelle material there.
Lol there really are some weird people on this site. Seriously, if you really can't see how blatantly this infringes on Nintendo's rights to THEIR OWN PROPERTY, then you are clearly lacking a functional understanding of the way the world works, and possibly a conscience, too.
Suing companies for infringing copyright or ripping off your intellectual property is NOT an action that's exclusive to Nintendo. Fact.
I'm with Nintendo. While it's really cool they should've gotten permission P:
Dont be ridiculous. You can't die in a Maricar. You always come back. You just lose time.
Just what kind of bad PR are you worried about? What do you think people will think? Are they afraid people wont want to play Mario Kart anymore? If anything its free publicity. Its this company that would get sued not N.
Don't see anything wrong with this, if I owned a very successful brand I wouldn't want other people using it without my permission. In some instances copyright can shut down many people and companies that have no intentions to use other brands or designs others use, but in this case it's a company trying to get away with stealing another company's brand.
Haha marika (or marica) has a tooooootally different meaning in spanish language (really offensive BTW).
Normally I'm the first to lash out at Nintendo for taking something down. I am, after all, an info-anarchist who's vocally against IP in general.
But even I think they were within their rights here. These guys were, after all, making money off of it.
Free advertising for Maricar, I'm sure it was planned on purpose.
..maybe they can fight Nintendo, Smash Bros style, for the rights?
i think the real reason they did this is to prevent any negativity that might be transferred onto them if an accident happens.
The Marikar company should have totally seen this coming. I mean come on how much more blatantly can you rip off and profit from a Nintendo franchise? Yes, it would be extremely cool if Nintendo did this directly, but maybe we'll just have to wait and see what comes of the Universal Studios Nintendo park.
I see Nintendo being in the right here. Imagine if someone was seriously hurt while riding and the boycotting and headache it would cause for Nintendo from those uninformed thinking it was Nintendo running the whole thing. There are good reasons this isn't allowed under Nintendo's name, though I think the Marikar company might have some success under their own brand. But brand recognition from Nintendo characters and real life karts was likely a huge part of their success thus far.
@Priceless_Spork "23 People Die in 'Mario Kart' Accident"
@Mega_Yarn_Poochy
Police suspect poor track design. Toad being questioned.
@samuelvictor My name in Japanese is pronounced and spelled exactly the same as the "cart" in Mario Kart. I probably owe Nintendo a lot of money for when Japanese kids call me "Mario Kart-Sensei". But yeah, the point is that this company didn't try very hard to not make their product sound different than Nintendo's.
it looks like great fun but really they should have known this would happen....
@DiscoGentleman Hahaha! Ohhhh yeah, that's hilarious hahaha.
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