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The battle between GenAI companies and the owners of the copyrighted materials that the technology runs on feels like it is gearing up. However, despite rumors that they have been lobbying the Japanese government to step in, Nintendo hasn’t made any big moves to take on OpenAI yet. According to some former Nintendo marketing managers, they might be using a lesson they’ve learned in their legal battle against Palworld to set up their eventual suit against OpenAI for copyright infringement.

This is an interesting take presented by Kit & Krysta on their recent YouTube video. The former Nintendo of America employees have a weekly podcast where they dive into some of the biggest news around Nintendo and gaming in general. They recently talked about the use of AI movie generator Sora, which has been used to produce awkward short movies of Nintendo characters like Mario and Pikachu. Considering Nintendo is known to be a litigation-happy company who are serious about protecting its characters, it is surprising they haven’t already gone after OpenAI for copyright infringement.

"If you think about, like, what is Nintendo going to do,” Kit said during a recent video posted to the Kit & Krysta channel. “They may be a bit more cautious in really thinking this out and thinking through the strategy.”

“Of how to approach this,” chimed in Krysta. 

“If we’re gonna do this, and this could potentially become a major legal precedent,” Kit continued. “It has to work. And we have to win. And what is the angle that we can find that we’re gonna win? It’s kind of like with Palworld. They somehow, surprisingly, couldn’t take action on the most obvious thing, which was just the designs of those characters. They had to find a backdoor angle. And they did. Nintendo’s lawyers are very good. I think they can probably find something. But they’re going to be incredibly careful about what is the entry point to that because they know that this is going to dictate how the rest of this whole back and forth goes, potentially for years.”

Sometimes in law, it isn’t about using the most obvious angle to get what you want. It seems likely that Nintendo’s lawyers are doing the same thing they did with Palworld and trying to find an angle that will help them avoid fumbling a case that is likely to set an important legal precedent around the world.

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