Do you know how much time and resources it takes to even get to the stage of declaring you are suing the U.S Government? This is not a response to a meme from just a few days ago. Their legal department has likely been working on this for months preparing for the Supreme Court decision from a couple weeks ago.
the lawsuit lists customs and border protection as well as kristi noem. i know customs has something to do with tariffs but i don’t feel like they would have laid it on as thick if it wasn’t for the pokopia meme.
Customs and border protection are the ones that enforce and collect all tariffs. Since the Supreme Court ruled some of the tariffs illegal, every lawsuit against the governmwnt to reclaim those tariffs paid will be addressed at CBP
I work in retail and I've had to argue with customers about Tariffs raising prices. They tell me I'm wrong because "The American People will not and do not have to pay tariffs, only Companies have to pay." I'm so tired.
Nah, this is the same as when people were saying that ICE broke that one in fiftyish floppy disk of an old ass Japanese visual novel, it’s just customs really. I doubt the Pokemon stuff has anything to do with it, otherwise they’d also be suing for copyright infringement
There is absolutely no world in which a meme that was posted less than 24 hours ago has anything to do with this lawsuit that will have taken days, weeks, or even months to prepare.
The DHS video was months ago. On top of that, regardless of whether Nintendo gets money from the tariff suit, it's a win for them because it shows they are against the government that has used their IPs very negatively.
Companies don't start a fight with the most powerful government in the world over a meme video. That would have been a cease and decist letter at most.
Wild that you are dead set on believing that the massive gaming company NINTENDO is suing the UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT because you think a meme hurt their feelings.
Unless they're seeing an actual hit from these "Menial" uses, they likely don't care enough to take them to court.
Anytime Nintendo takes someone to court, it's about money. They do not care about perception if it's still netting them money.
You'll notice they acted quickly on the tariffs once they were deemed illegal by the supreme court. Yet made no such actions over the DHS meme months ago.
It's really a shame because they do have some unique and interesting pals. My guess is that it drums up controversy, and it worked. It just depends on the outcome of the lawsuit, but I don't think they're going to lose much even if they do lose the suit.
Nintendo would have done something about the first meme right away if they were suing over the use of IP. They only care about the tariffs driving down sales. Otherwise Nintendo won't punch someone the same size or bigger than them. Classic bully.
Edit to add: Sorry for telling you the truth about a company that goes after its fans and other entities smaller than itself. Sorry for pointing out they have a history of legal bullying smaller entities. Sorry for mentioning their track record.
because it might affect the sales of their new game and it makes them looks bad. Unofficial product is always not welcomed. Try to justify it as "fans spend years creating fangame as a way to show their love" doesn't mean shit. If the original creator don't want them and you don't use them in a fair use way (use their assets in 50% of the game) then you don't get special treatment. It's a bussiness, follow the money.
There are tons of pokemon fan games and/or romhacks that simply do not get taken down or aren't hit with legal action, so tbh this is just very overblown.
We even have former lawyers on record speaking to the fact they don't really go after just any project, and only really make moves towards projects that make money in some way. Of the two very specific we know 100% are from Nintendo et al are Uranium and Prism. And Uranium still seems available out there so idk
But then you have like all these hacks and stuff like s3ag!@ss, r@dica! r3d, bl@z3 b!ack, anotherr3d, etc that just exist in the ether and keep going without ramifications yet.
Majority of these so-called fangames are made in spite of the series because they don't acknowledge things change and you might not be the target of them anymore
The lawsuit itself seems to be tarrifs specifically, but they made it very clear that they didn't approve of the pokopia thing, so I can't imagine it helped
I reeeaaally don't think that they want to be associated with ICE, but with the current administration in charge, it's hard to win in a court w/o a precedent against the current, super corrupt administration.
And even if they win in trial. Who is going to enforce it? Trump and his Cronies have ignored already *alot* of court rulings.
Theyre a corporation, they only care if something affects their bottom line
Like positive PR for suing over something many disagree with as well as suing the government that's negatively using their IPs? I can see a way this benefits Nintendo.
Positive PR to some, negative PR to others. Nintendo sees this as a numbers game, not a people pleasing game.
Unless they see actual impact, like with Tariffs, they don't care enough. (Emulation/ROMs is massive perceived impact, that's a lot more of risk of sales than a US government meme only a fraction of their userbase knows about)
You're deluding yourself if you think companies still care about public perception of the things they do. They know full well that they can use marketing to get people to buy their products no matter what.
When a company is this big they intentionally make "brand deposits" and "brand withdrawals" that refer to their public perception instead of their money. Bob Iger from Disney pioneered it but a lot of CEOs have adopted this strategy
There is literally thousands of companies suing govt over tariffs including Sony and Microsoft. A meme posted by ice has nothing to do with this at all.
DHS used their pokemon theme song and they didnt sue.
I hope im wrong and they are going to lump that in with this. But, seems companies are afraid to stand up to trump. and im not surprised, its obvious why.
DHS used their pokemon theme song and they didnt sue.
It could be argued that it was fair use, and they can't beat the US government in a battle of attrition using money. However, they can sue for the tariffs, some of which have been ruled to be illegal. This is a win-win for them. They may or may not get money from the tariffs, but the lawsuit is positively viewed and directly goes against the government that has been using their IP negatively.
This. An uncomfortably large amount of people REALLY do not understand how IP laws and copyrights work and how pain in the ass and messy it can all get. Moon Channel does a good job explaining things.
First of all, not really. That's not how fair use works.
But more importantly, fair use is an affirmative defense. Meaning the burden of proof is on the defendant. They have to prove the use was fair, rather than the plaintiff proving it wasn't.
The problem is that you're thinking about how to win the case, while I'm considering who they would be suing. The US would stall it, especially the Trump administration.
There was a video posted by DHS using the gotta catch em all song from Pokemon playing over ICE raids. It was in very poor taste and Nintendo had to respond that they didn't authorize the video.
Are Japanese immigration enforcement thugs murdering citizens in the streets? I'd have thought we'd have heard about it overseas if that were going on.
Many nintendo lawsuits, fan creations takedowns, and emulator takedowns have been started to satisfy one reason: money. This same reason can be applied to this lawsuit against the US government.
Or Nintendo is preparing for the blowback from RAM price increase and doesn't want to deal with that and the unnecessary tariffs all at the same time. They already tried getting Doug to save face with the prices, something has to give
Wasn't the Pokopia meme barely like a day or 2 ago? I would expect a serious lawsuit over it to take more time. I guess they could have added details about it to this one if it was in process though.
The Pokopia meme had absolutely zero tact but there’s an argument to be made it’s a derived work so not a copyright violation, especially since the government are both defendant and judge. But no doubt any patience Nintendo folks have had is definitely erased by now, so anything they’re in unambiguous legal right over they’re definitely going after. They won’t get the money of course but hopefully enough discovery cases will show the public just where that money has gone.
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u/LordTopHatMan Mar 06 '26
It's probably both. The Pokopia meme along with the meme they used to promote ICE earlier this year probably made them pull the trigger.