The alleged Switch modder who declined to shut down their business after receiving a warning from Nintendo is now going up against the company in court, seemingly without a lawyer.
Earlier this year, Nintendo set its sights on Modded Hardware, a group which does exactly as its name suggests. As Tom wrote in July, Nintendo had requested Modded Hardware stop selling modded hardware, however the group – reportedly headed up by Ryan “Hombrew Homie” Daly – didn’t comply, despite initially suggesting it would.
This ultimately led to Nintendo filing a lawsuit against Daly.
And that brings us to today, with word Daly is now poised to go up against Nintendo in court, with the defendant denying any wrongdoing, or even that they own and operate the Modded Hardware business.
As reported by Torrent Freak, Daly has responded to the lawsuit largely by answering “denied” against Nintendo’s claims.
In other cases, and as laid out in a copy of Daly’s answer to Nintendo’s complaint, he replied: “Defendant is without sufficient information to either admit or deny the allegations of this paragraph, and on that basis, denies them.”
Daly listed 17 ‘affirmative defences’, in which the defendant introduces evidence that could excuse them from liability. These defences include fair use, invalid copyrights, a lack of standing, fraudulent inducement, an arbitration clause, failure to state a claim, and unjust enrichment.
The lawsuit can now move on to the discovery process, which means both Nintendo and Daly can gather their evidence, and the likes of depositions, interrogatories and document requests will take place. It is unclear whether Daly will continue on without legal representation.
In the meantime, the Modded Hardware website has been made private and requires a password to access.
Nintendo is notoriously protective of its brand, and is often in the news for various legal dealings.
In just the last few weeks, the company has announced it is suing Palworld developer Pocketpair for patent infringement, seemingly stopped a creator working on their Switch emulator known as Ryujinx and issued a copyright strike against a YouTube channel that reviews emulation handhelds.
In addition, an AI powered copyright tool has recently been used to remove AI generated images of Nintendo characters such as Mario from the internet.