Nintendo has issued a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) against a Kickstarter campaign by Bitmap Books.
The Kickstarter in question was for NES/Famicom: A Visual Compendium, a book which features written content and artwork from the NES-era of video games.
Pages showing what the book would have been.
According to the DMCA notice, Nintendo isn’t happy with Bitmap using their IP and artwork so freely. In simpler terms, Nintendo doesn’t want a company making money from a book that is, in Nintendo’s eyes, mostly made up of its artwork. From the takedown:
“This Kickstarter project makes unauthorized use of Nintendo's copyrights as noted above [on the Kickstarter page]. The description of the book states that it is ‘mainly visual,’ and the campaign shows pages of the book which consist simply of large screenshots copied directly from Nintendo’s video games.”
Nintendo also takes umbrage with a modified seal of approval that appears on the front cover.
“This campaign also makes use of a mark that is confusingly similar to registered trademarks owned by Nintendo.”
Nintendo Life (which has a member of staff contributing the book) reports that before the project was pulled, Bitmap had secured some £170,000 in funding. The same site also points out the book was set to feature exclusive interviews.
What’s not clear at the moment is whether Bitmap had been in contact with Nintendo prior to taking to Kickstarter to fund its latest book. If we hear more, we’ll be sure to let you know.
Bitmap’s other work includes visual compendiums for Commodore 64, Amiga, Sinclair Spectrum, a Super Famicom / Super Nintendo box art compilation, and Artcade, another collection of retro game covers.
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Wesley Copeland is a freelance news writer who writes terrible bios. For more obvious statements and video game chat, you should probably follow him on Twitter.
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