Nintendo and Amazon are seeking a default judgement on a joint lawsuit filed back in October 2023 against sellers alleged to have sold fake Nintendo products on Amazon. (Thanks, Polygon.)
The plaintiffs filed documents in the US earlier this week requesting a default judgement awarding $7 million in statutory damages against third-party sellers accused of selling $2 million worth of counterfeit Nintendo gear, including amiibo and game carts. Summonses were served to the defendants but they failed to respond, according to new court documents.
According to those documents, each of the 27 Nintendo trademark infringements results in total potential statutory damages of a minimum of $27,000 to a maximum of $54 million. The $7 million figure proposed was arrived at by tripling “the aggregate sales of the counterfeit products”, which the doc cites as “conservative, reasonable, and in line with other awards in this District”.
Nintendo is famous for deploying its legal eagles, of course, and given the number of fake amiibo cards, mini consoles, soundtracks, figurines, and other non-official Nintendo products for sale on Amazon and elsewhere, you can see why they’d be keen to deter others.
Maybe they should crack out the steamroller again like they did in the Netherlands back in the ’90s.
