Recently, I saw the NetEase Cloud telling QQ Music, which reminded me of a question circulating on this earth: If you are exiled to an uninhabited island and have no means of survival, then what can be the most effective in writing on the beach? Some people will choose hero, some people will choose SOS, but these are not the right answers, the correct answer is to draw a Mickey Mouse on the beach, so disney will send a helicopter at the speed of light to take you to court to fight, which is Disney's strongest legal department legend.
But in the Eastern Hemisphere, there are also game companies that have won the title of the strongest legal department in the Eastern Hemisphere by virtue of their own super high winning rate, that is, Nintendo. Unlike the domestic Nanshan Pizza Hut's "I copy you can, you copy I can't", foreign game factories attach great importance to their own research and development and purchased copyrights, and they have to go to the court for a cup of tea at every turn. Such as the appearance of the controller, the name of the button, the game system mechanism, as small as the pattern of a tree, as long as it is not free commercial, it may be a lawsuit. Of course, you may still be very abstract in this way, but when we take a closer look at Nintendo's famous campaign, you will know why it has stood firm in copyright.
Pokémon Yongkira Incident
In pokémon, the world's famous IP, there are currently hundreds of Nintendo original Pokémon images, and Yongkira is one of them, the most iconic thing about this super power Pokémon is that it always holds a spoon in its hand, and after communicating between players, it will evolve into a hudi with two spoons.
As for why it is mainly symbolized by a spoon, its design is actually inspired by an Israeli magician named Yurigueira in the 70s, who is most proud of his magic trick is bending the spoon, and has performed this magic trick many times. At that time, he became popular with this move, especially in Japan, so in the Japanese pronunciation, Yongjira and Yuriguera are also very close. When the magician saw Yongjira in the Pokémon card game, his first reaction was neither happy nor ridiculous, but "Lao Tzu wants to defend his rights".
Yurigueira filed a lawsuit in the Los Angeles court, demanding that Nintendo's compensation for name and image was 10.1 billion yen, which was a huge amount for Nintendo at that time, and because there was indeed reference to the design of the Pokémon, it was indeed impossible to jump into the Yellow River and wash it away. So this group of clever ghosts in the Nintendo Legal Department said: Yong kira's translated name in foreign countries is kadabra, what does it have to do with my use of yong kira in Japan? Los Angeles doesn't seem to have the authority to hear cases in Japan, right? This dragged the case into life imprisonment. Although Yongkira did not appear in Pokémon's new version of the card game, we can still see it in the game, the key is that the 10.1 billion, not a single dollar was given.
Dry crush entertainment giant Universal Pictures
The so-called people do not offend me, I do not offend, if people offend me, then give me the money!
The next case can be said to have laid the historical position of the strongest legal department in the eastern hemisphere of Nintendo, and there were many large and small cases before that, but the reasons for winning the case were very sufficient, but it was only a basic rights protection. Although many ren dolphins know which thing I want to say, it is really very exciting and I have to mention it again.
In the 80s, Nintendo officially entered Europe and the United States with its latest arcade game "Donkey Kong", and this refreshing game became the darling of the European and American game halls at that time, selling 60,000 units and earning 180 million US dollars, at this time Mario was even a character who did not even have a name. To this day, as long as you talk about the history of Nintendo's development, you can't avoid this achievement. Different from this new "young man", at that time, Universal seemed to be the leading big brother in the entertainment industry, watching the video game industry so popular, naturally wanted to step in, only to find out that you "young people" are so unskilled, but also used my movie IP?
That's right, it's about the famous film and television movie "King Kong". This was absolutely intolerable for the lawyer-turned-global president, who had already cooperated with Coleco, a game console factory, to launch a home version of Donkey Kong. This behavior is undoubtedly adding fuel to the fire for Universal. So Universal immediately used a lawyer's letter to warn, demanding that the sale and production of the game be stopped immediately, and all the profits be handed over. After all, it is the leading big brother, Coleco, as a manufacturer originally based in Europe and the United States, naturally does not dare to slack off and promises to hand over part of the net income.
But Nintendo is based in Japan, where will admit it. At that time, Howard Lincoln, the head of the legal department of Nintendo in the United States, also considered that the other party was a predator in the entertainment industry, and there would be a lot of trouble in business if he really wanted to fight, so he thought of an out-of-court settlement, so he took Coleco's lawyer representative to negotiate around the world. Although there was almost no progress in the incident after a period of time, this also allowed Nintendo to catch the information difference, and whenever the other party provided the copyright certificate of "King Kong", the other party could not hand it over, and threatened: "You must give more royalties, otherwise you will save money and wait for the lawsuit!"
These words are like exposing yourself to an old fritter like Howard, who has no evidence to win and can only threaten with his mouth. So Howard turned around and began to discuss with the president how much money this wave was going to do. However, Universal still clings to "King Kong", and with the identity of the leading big brother, many manufacturers involved in related IP have converged a lot. However, Nintendo paid no attention to Universal's warnings and continued to suck up money with Donkey Kong. Because copyright litigation is not Howard's specialty, so the copyright master John Kirby was invited to fight instead, is it familiar to see this name? As mentioned in previous Nintendo-related articles, the source of the name of "Star Kirby" is actually likely to come from this barrister.
To tell the truth, this lawsuit is basically difficult to lose, even if Universal said how famous his "King Kong" is, "Donkey Kong" copied this and that, these words are actually useless, because at that time Kirby already had the evidence that Universal did not have the copyright of "King Kong", and directly shot Universal to death in court.
It turned out that the copyright "King Kong" had appeared as early as 1933, but the holders of the copyright had not paid any attention to it. It wasn't until 1976 that someone paid a sum of money to the copyright owner and remade the film. However, on the one hand, he also wanted to shoot, and on the other hand, he did not want to pay money, in order to obtain the right to shoot the "King Kong" movie, he sued the copyright owner in court, saying that the original novel has passed very well, the role copyright has not been updated, according to the reason, it should become a public property right that anyone can use, the court immediately recognized this statement, universal won the lawsuit.
And Universal, who made the movie, seems to have forgotten about this matter, and actually told Nintendo that this is its own copyright, which is not pure scolding! So Universal lost cleanly, but fortunately it only lost, and there was no compensation or other issues. But Nintendo is not a soft persimmon, and it can't run away after pinching it. After the end of this case, Kirby backhand sued a "King Kong" game owned by Universal, and the content cannot be said to be very similar, but can only be said to be exactly the same. It turned out that the reason why Universal was able to notice "Donkey Kong" was because a game company purchased the rights to "King Kong" from Universal and wanted to release related games, and what Universal did not expect was that they actually copied Nintendo's "Donkey Kong" and released it.
Subsequently, Global appealed many times but failed, and the leading big brother could only directly pay 58 million US dollars to the "young people", ending the criminal "King Kong" rights protection career.
White Cat Plan touch screen gameplay patent event
This is a patent incident that occurred in early 2018, and it is actually one of Nintendo's largest legal related events in recent years. This matter was intolerable to Nintendo, and the compensation demanded rose from the initial 4.4 billion yen to 9 billion yen, and finally ended with a settlement of 3.3 billion yen. The reason is that the developer of the "White Cat Project", COLOPL, applied for a patent for touch gameplay, named "ぷにコン", too complex terms here will not be repeated, to put it bluntly, it is actually a virtual joystick operation on the screen.
The reason for Nintendo's lawsuit is that the White Cat Project has a part of the patent that is adulterated with Nintendo's patents. As early as 2004, Nintendo had filed a patent for a technology that "uses the point of touch on the screen as the origin (datum coordinate), and then drags and drops the operation of simulating a joystick on the screen." The touchscreen technology in 2004 is indeed not advanced, and Nintendo can be said to have taken the lead in this regard, and then in 2006, more new content was added to this patent to make it more widely covered. In theory, this lawsuit is not going to be fought, and COLOPL has indeed lost all aspects.
What shocked people about this incident was not the ability of Nintendo in the courtroom, but the legal awareness of Nintendo outside the courtroom was also very strong. When the lawyer provides relevant evidence, both mobile phone players and console players are basically fried, because Nintendo's patent actually covers all touchscreen mobile games! If you have played the NDS touchscreen board you will understand what this sentence means, that is to say, all the current touchscreen smartphone games are basically patents in Nintendo, and Nintendo will not trouble you in this regard as long as it does not affect its own interests. But if you want to steal, it is another matter, COLOPL's behavior is equivalent to bus privatization, if Nintendo has the heart to get it, I am afraid that this company will only be able to work for Nintendo in the future.
The above three cases all show Nintendo's legal awareness and legal level, can drag and fight, when it is time to shoot, for the current domestic plagiarism of many original paintings, Nintendo should be a good learning object!