Nintendo Is Not Happy With One Company's Attempt at Real Life 'Mario Kart'

Nintendo is taking legal action against a kart rental company for alleged copyright infringement. Tokyo-based kart service MariCar is a business that has allowed consumers to live out their own, safe version of Mario Kart as they tour the streets of Japan’s capital and Nintendo believes the company’s operations are in violation of its intellectual property rights. “In this lawsuit, against the defendant company which provides rental services for public road carts, we have declared the mark ‘MariCar’, which is an abbreviation of Mario Kart, widely known as the series of racing games that we manufacture and sell,” reads the official press statement from Nintendo’s legal representatives.

As Nigel Sylvester proved late last year, the popularity of rental services like this is definitely significant. However, considering Nintendo’s take-no-prisoners legal approach to its intellectual and artistic property, operations like this are frowned upon pretty heavily. “[MariCar] use[s] it for publicity and sales without obtaining our permission, and we insist that such an act falls under unfair competition and copyright infringement acts against us,” Nintendo’s representatives explain.

You can check out a video of MariCar’s services below.