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Nintendo Investigating Possible Copyright Infringement By Nokia

Tom Ivan's picture

By Tom Ivan

November 27, 2009

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Nintendo’s is investigating a potential case of copyright infringement after a Nokia blog post showed a video of the handset maker’s new N900 smartphone playing emulated retro games.

“There’s already a bunch of great retro gaming emulator apps available for you to download,” says the video, which shows buttons that appear to open emulators for systems including Nintendo's Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, NES and SNES.

Viewable on Pocket Gamer, the video shows Super Mario World and Super Mario Bros. 3 playing on the mobile phone. According to The Independent, the video states that "some emulators require separate ROM images to play games", adding: "Most publishers allow individual title usage provided that the user is in possession of the original title."

Nintendo UK PR manager Robert Saunders said that the company was unaware of Nokia's apparent move, but added: "We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place."

The Nokia N900 launched in the US on November 18.

savagehenry's picture
On November 27th savagehenry said:

It's not the first handheld device to be released with a capability to run emulated games, Game-park Holdings: GP2X Wiz is the most obvious example, it's linux based and can happily emulate MAME and various other systems. Jail-broken iPhones and iTouch are also more than capable with the right bios files, which are the trickiest thing to get hold.

Sounds very much like closing the gate after the horse has bolted, roms of various descriptions have been commonplace on the internet for a while now. Maybe Nintendo should be a bit more proactive and instead of acting all protectionist, they should maybe think about licensing their IPs to those who want to use them with hardware other than their own, they could release all those roms themselves at a nominal cost to the user so if people want to use them with emulators they can.

Ben_Lathwell's picture
On November 27th Ben_Lathwell said:

I don't think its the fact that it CAN support emulators that has put Nintendo's nose out of joint, it's Nokia promoting it.

Let's face it you wouldn't market a laptop by saying it can download torrents, even though they all can and torrents can be legal.

I'm not so much against roms and emulators, particularily for games that you cannot buy legally through shops, LIVE, PSN etc etc.

But Large companies shouldn't be encouraging what is essentially piracy, and then putting a weak disclaimer on the end, stating most publishers won't mind if you own an official version.

I imagine is rarely ever the case that people own a real version or that publishers dont mind, Nintendo didn't even want people using Game Genies

savagehenry's picture
On November 27th savagehenry said:

I see your point, it's clear there is a huge amount of grey area, though you could say its flies a little in the face of Nintendo, what was evident in that video was several systems emulated, although the Mario Bros was the most obvious. I would have to agree it slightly poor judgement on Nokia part to promote it as a integral feature, if that is what they are doing. Presumably the emulation software is home-brew, like that on the iPhones.

Many games that you can get as rom files have been out of production for years. NES/SNES systems are no longer being sold and Nintendo has made their money from hardware and software sale, reinvested profits from those generations wisely in current technology. Aside from undermining the rules of copyright (which are draconian) who is it really hurting?

Retro gaming through emulation is huge and the technology to support it has grown over the years. I could understand them taking exception at a device that promotes the used of NDS roms and we've already seen the backlash against manufacturer of M3, R4 and N5 adapters.

But for a system that has long been in our gaming past, I think Nintendo would be wiser to let it slide and even help companies like Nokia develop better emulators that show their product in the best light. It could be another revenue stream for them and it wouldn't be the first time Nintendo products have found themselves on other systems.

hasan's picture
On November 29th hasan said:

"Many games that you can get as rom files have been out of production for years. NES/SNES systems are no longer being sold and Nintendo "

All these are being sold on the Wii virtual Console [ check Wii shop channel], they should sue Nokia, this falls under Intellectual property. I can't imagine Disney to allow someone to what the like with a Mickey Mouse animation just because it was made in the 1930's .

On the flip side this also props up Nintendo and how great and timeless their games are, I would chose Mario world or super metroid over any game available on the iPhone, Symbian or Android phone if you played these games you would agree I think....