3 ms·

How has Dolphin avoided getting sued by Nintendo? They seem very uptight about controlling their IPs

bombcar 5y ago
They’re careful to not make downloads of roms, isos, or boot roms.
0xcde4c3db 5y ago
It might be instructive to flip the question around: what would Nintendo sue for? For which works of authorship is Dolphin infringing the copyrights? Which Nintendo patents or trademarks does Dolphin infringe? If the angle is contributory infringement based on users running illegally copied games, how does Dolphin fail to pass the "substantial non-infringing uses" test? The only emulator project I know of that was apparently successfully stopped by Nintendo wasn't an emulator of a Nintendo system at all. It was actually a Neo Geo Pocket emulator that had "Pokemon" in its name (for stupid reasons that are not relevant to this discussion) and was threatened for trademark infringement on that basis.
- CobrastanJorji 5y ago
  And yet, so many amazing emulator projects have been sued out of existence. Remember Bleem, the Windows program that played contemporary Playstation games? Bleem actually won the court case, but the legal costs forced them out of business. And then there was the time Sony sued Connectix for their emulator. Sony got an injuction, and while Connectix won in appeal, they also ran out of money and closed. Nintendo, on the other hand, focuses less on suing emualator developers and more on suing distributors of ROMS for old, unavailable titles, like LoveROM.
  - 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
    I'm not convinced that many emulators have been sued out of existence; do you have more examples? Over the past quarter-century, there have been countless emulators released, at least a couple dozen of which achieved considerable fame. Of the examples mentioned so far, only one (Connectix) actually hinged on an issue that was substantially related to emulation (copies of the PS1 firmware used for reverse engineering during development). The bleem! case was primarily about commercial use of screenshots, and the NGP emulator matter was about the emulator's name containing an unrelated trademark (and, to my knowledge, never actually went to court).
  - lostgame 5y ago
    No. Two amazing emulators got sued out of existence - and paved the way for legal existence of hundreds of emulators since. In no way are emulators a target these days. The ROMs are. By your own admission - the emulator war was won.
  - Cloudef 5y ago
    After this sony hired the emulator devs to work for sony for their own emulator (which consists of bleem code). Money wins :)
CodeArtisan 5y ago
IIRC, Nintendo hasn't sued anyone since their lost against GameGenie. edit: https://enwp.org?curid=60789181 https://enwp.org?curid=60789181

They’re careful to not make downloads of roms, isos, or boot roms.

It might be instructive to flip the question around: what would Nintendo sue for? For which works of authorship is Dolphin infringing the copyrights? Which Nintendo patents or trademarks does Dolphin infringe? If the angle is contributory infringement based on users running illegally copied games, how does Dolphin fail to pass the "substantial non-infringing uses" test? The only emulator project I know of that was apparently successfully stopped by Nintendo wasn't an emulator of a Nintendo system at all. It was actually a Neo Geo Pocket emulator that had "Pokemon" in its name (for stupid reasons that are not relevant to this discussion) and was threatened for trademark infringement on that basis.

CobrastanJorji 5y ago
And yet, so many amazing emulator projects have been sued out of existence. Remember Bleem, the Windows program that played contemporary Playstation games? Bleem actually won the court case, but the legal costs forced them out of business. And then there was the time Sony sued Connectix for their emulator. Sony got an injuction, and while Connectix won in appeal, they also ran out of money and closed. Nintendo, on the other hand, focuses less on suing emualator developers and more on suing distributors of ROMS for old, unavailable titles, like LoveROM.
- 0xcde4c3db 5y ago
  I'm not convinced that many emulators have been sued out of existence; do you have more examples? Over the past quarter-century, there have been countless emulators released, at least a couple dozen of which achieved considerable fame. Of the examples mentioned so far, only one (Connectix) actually hinged on an issue that was substantially related to emulation (copies of the PS1 firmware used for reverse engineering during development). The bleem! case was primarily about commercial use of screenshots, and the NGP emulator matter was about the emulator's name containing an unrelated trademark (and, to my knowledge, never actually went to court).
- lostgame 5y ago
  No. Two amazing emulators got sued out of existence - and paved the way for legal existence of hundreds of emulators since. In no way are emulators a target these days. The ROMs are. By your own admission - the emulator war was won.
- Cloudef 5y ago
  After this sony hired the emulator devs to work for sony for their own emulator (which consists of bleem code). Money wins :)

CodeArtisan 5y ago

IIRC, Nintendo hasn't sued anyone since their lost against GameGenie. edit: https://enwp.org?curid=60789181 https://enwp.org?curid=60789181