Following up on a string of legal victories against gaming pirates, Nintendo of America is suing a publisher it accuses of stealing maps and player advice for the popular GoldenEye 007 game.
In the suit filed Wednesday in US District Court in Seattle, Nintendo accuses Prima Communications of plagiarizing GoldenEye maps from Nintendo Power magazine and from Nintendo's Official Player's Guide to the Nintendo 64 cartridge. Nintendo is asking for a financial award equal to Prima's profits from its GoldenEye guide and a cease-and-desist order against its further distribution.
"Over the years publishers of unauthorized strategy guides such as Prima have become increasingly bold in their attempts to misappropriate Nintendo's valuable copyrighted works," Nintendo CEO Howard Lincoln said in a prepared statement. "The time has come to put a stop to this misconduct."
Prima is a private, 100-employee company in Rocklin, California. Debra Kempker, publisher of Prima's entertainment division, offered no detailed comment. "We just found out this afternoon," she said.
The firm produces trade and computer productivity books, and its line of high-profile authorized videogame guides includes Tomb Raider 2, Nightmare Creatures, and Duke Nuke 'Em. The company even owns licenses to produce guides for at least two Nintendo 64 titles by outside developers: THQ's WCW vs. NWO, and Atari's San Francisco Rush, raising the question of why Nintendo would single out Prima for legal action.
"I don't think what our third parties do has anything to do with this," says Nintendo PR director Beth Llewellyn, "Player guides are a pretty subjective thing, and it's easy to tell [when they are plagiarized]. In fact, there were even a few inadvertent errors that were copied."
Llewellyn added that although most of Nintendo's legal battles have involved videogame piracy, the company will also guard its rights from infringement by publishers, "especially since we have our own magazines, and we publish our own player guides."
Highlights of Nintendo's campaign against software counterfeiting this year include a California court issuing a restraining order against Games City for its Doctor V64 and Game Doctor Nintendo cartridge copying devices. In April, customs officials in Paraguay seized millions of dollars of pirated Nintendo software. The company also defended itself successfully against unrelated patent suits from Alpex Computer Corp. and General Electric.
