After being sued for millions of dollars by one of the world's largest gaming companies, Los Angeles resident Matthew Storman decided to defend himself. The result... It was as expected.

Storman owned and operated a site called RomUniverse until the summer of 2020, when it was shut down after a lawsuit alleging massive copyright infringement from Nintendo, which owned many of the ROMs that were hosted Storman not only hosted content, profited directly from the content by offering premium memberships for unlimited downloads (thanks to TorrentFreak).

"This is a straightforward video game piracy case, and the material facts are undisputed," Nintendo's lawyers argued to the court. "Defendant Matthew Storman owned and operated the website RomUniverse.com for over a decade. He posted thousands of pirated copies of Nintendo games on this website and distributed hundreds of thousands of those pirated copies."

The court found that "the defendant's conduct was not in violation of any of Nintendo's copyright laws.

Nintendo sought $15 million in damages, along with summary judgment against Storman

In response to these allegations, Storman argued that the site did not violate the law and the suit should be dismissed. He argued that RomUniverse did not offer pirated Nintendo games and that he himself had never uploaded any ROMs. This claim was countered by the fact that in an earlier deposition, Storman had admitted to doing so.

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Consuelo Marshall ruled on the matter and disagreed with Storman. Not one bit.

"The defendant filed an affidavit in opposition to the motion, in which he declared that he 'denies and objects that he uploaded the files to said website and did not at any time review the contents of said ROM files.'

This is a bit troubling. Storman had previously testified that he profited from the site's premium accounts, stating that during 2019, the site earned between $30,000 and $36,000, which was his primary income, and that he was making about $800 per month just before it closed in 2020.

Not surprisingly, Judge Marshall found that Nintendo had established various forms of copy infringement, not just trademark infringement. The court granted the motion for summary judgment and "awarded plaintiffs $1,715,000 in statutory damages under the Copyright Act and $400,000 in statutory damages under the Lanham Act, for a total of $2,115,000."

This was far less than the $15 million requested by Nintendo's lawyers. The judge also refused to grant a permanent injunction against Storman (since he had already shut down the site) and refused further sanctions sought by Nintendo. However, this could hardly be called a victory for Storman, whose "sole source of income at the time of the deposition was unemployment benefits and food stamps."

The full text of the ruling can be read here.