Nintendo triumphs in legal battle against Amazon sellers of fake amiibo figures

Nintendo has won another lawsuit this week, this time against a pair of counterfeit sellers selling fake amiibo cards on Amazon.

In October 2023, Nintendo and Amazon filed a joint lawsuit against the counterfeiters for allegedly selling fake Nintendo goods, but the sellers failed to respond.

Now a Seattle district judge has issued a default judgement in the companies’ favour, awarding over $7m in trademark infringement damages (thanks Polygon).

Specifically, Nintendo sought $705,963 against one seller through several seller accounts, $6.2m against another seller with several accounts, and $47,652 against both for a shared account.

“The Court finds this damages request to be reasonable, in light of the nature of the deceptive scheme, the scope of the sales, the involvement of each Defendant, as well as the need for compensation, deterrence, and punishment,” court documents read. “The Court therefore awards Nintendo damages in the amounts and allocations sought.”

Amazon shut down the sellers’ accounts ahead of filing the original complaint.

“Nintendo utilises both internal and external resources to combat counterfeit and infringing products,” wrote lawyers in that original complaint. “Nintendo works with a third-party brand protection service vendor on the detection and removal of product listings violating Nintendo’s IP rights that are identified and sold in Amazon’s stores. Nintendo works regularly and collaboratively with Amazon to identify counterfeit Nintendo products and to strengthen automated detection and removal of the products from Amazon’s stores.”

The news follows an announcement from Nintendo yesterday it was successful in a lawsuit against French file-sharing company Dstorage, which operates the website 1fichier.com. The decision was “significant” in the company’s ongoing fight against pirated games, as well as for “the entire games industry”.

Other lawsuit wins include against Switch emulator Yuzu, which shut down and paid Nintendo $2.4m, as well as against a streamer who broadcast pirated games last year.

Perhaps the most high-profile legal action from Nintendo, though, is its ongoing patent infringement lawsuit against Palworld developer Pocketpair. The Pokémon-with-guns game has surpassed 32 million players a year after its release, but the legal case currently remains unresolved.