Costa Rican supermarket wins trademark battle against Nintendo
116 comments
·February 2, 2025oniony
evan_
> José Mario Alfaro González
Just to add to it all: In Paper Mario: TTYD there’s a segment where Mario infiltrates a professional wrestling promotion, and in the English translation he uses the name “The Great Gonzalez”.
jmcgough
Most likely a reference to the boxer Rodolfo González, who was extremely popular in Japan and is frequently referenced in video games (e.g. Gato in Chrono Trigger is named Gonzalez in the Japanese release).
evan_
Interesting, I never knew (or bothered to look into…) the context, but it did seem like a non sequitur given Mario’s vague Italian heritage. That seems likely.
bilekas
Haha I actually had no idea about all this, given Nintendos proclivity for suing people over seemingly small things, I can imagine the hiring process involved something along the lines of "If you don't join us, we'll sue your family for infringement"
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jmcgough
Not familiar with the Costa Rican legal system, but in US law you can lose your trademark if you don't actively protect it from infringement. They are legally obligated to be litigious.
skeaker
This is often parroted and almost never true. US courts will not kill one of the biggest and most well-recognized companies in the world because of one tiny corner supermarket.
marcosdumay
In any way, Nintendo suing a supermarket due to trademark violations is nonsense.
What are they claiming? That people will confuse it with a gaming console?
Cumpiler69
I'm still waiting for Nintendo to sue parents for naming their kids Mario.
pinko
Knowing quite a bit about the world of Costa Rican grocery stores -- many of which started using "Hiper-" (spanish for hyper-) as a prefix in their names a few decades ago, to one-up markets merely named "Super-" [1] -- I'm actually quite suprised they didn't just rename themselves "Hiper Mario" and save the legal fees. But bravo to them for winning against all odds.
[1] https://ticotimes.net/2004/04/02/hipermas-supermarket-aims-f...
Loic
This is interesting.
We have the same in France. The first big "big surface" stores were named supermarché, then we got hypermarché and the funniest is that now we have superette, a small surface store, branded like the super/hyper but within the city center.
The "ette" French suffix is to reduce the main word.
obiefernandez
In Mexico I’ve seen a lot of small shops (what we would call “bodegas” in US cities) called Mini-Super. Always gives me a chuckle.
zero_bias
There is a supermarket chain called Big C in Thailand, and the smallest ones are called Mini Big C, which has always amused me.
_nalply
You mean a diminutive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diminutive
> A diminutive is a word obtained by modifying a root word to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of the object or quality named, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment, and sometimes to belittle something or someone.
Yeah, it's funny, a word consisting both of an augmentative (the opposite of diminutive) and a diminutive.
Loic
Thank you, I had the German word in mind and was not able to find the English one in my foggy brain.
OJFord
That's meaningful though, at least in my experiences in France circa twenty years ago, a supermarché would be a supermarket like here in the UK, and a hypermarché would have all kinds of other stuff like clothes, back to school stationery, seasonal gear/toys, etc. - as well as other mini shops around the edge, cutting keys, McDo, etc.
robertlagrant
> we have superette, a small surface store, branded like the super/hyper but within the city center
I think we visited a few of those when we had a family holiday to France last year. They seemed really nice.
PetitPrince
I think supermarché is more a type of shop that offers products that are traditionally from different shop (you've got a bakery, green-grocer, butcher, cheese-monger, electronics, etc... under one shop), while the hypermarché are really defined the "big surface" you mentioned.
So it make sense to have a superette in the corner of the street that offer everyday goods while an hypermarché have clothing, DIY materials, big appliances, etc. on sale..
mytailorisrich
Actually, there is a definition for "hypermarket", which is to combine supermarket and department store [1].
Most supermarkets that are big enough are in fact "hypermarkets" nowadays.
A "superette" is a small supermarket.
dang
This comment has to go in https://news.ycombinator.com/highlights.
adzm
How did I never know this existed? Are there more secret pages like this??
genezeta
https://news.ycombinator.com/lists
(It's linked at the bottom of each page, along with the Guidelines, FAQ, etc)
wslh
"Hiper" refers to something bigger than "Super", and it's common to respect that convention. Wikipedia defines both [1][2]. From this photo[3] the size of "Super Mario" follows that convention. It is obviously true that there are more options for names but congratulations to "Don Mario".
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypermarket
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarket
[3] https://www.techspot.com/news/106591-super-mario-supermarket...
estebarb
Actually, "hiper-something" trend started with Hipermas, created by a bigger local supermarket chain (Corporación Supermercados Unidos, which owned others like: Más x Menos [More for less] and Pali). They were bought by and renamed to Walmart. Sharing the "hiper" prefix I only know HiperDiego, which like a Walmart big.
Here most are "super-" if they are big enough. if they are smaller "mini super-". All the categories before are self service.
If they are really tiny (a window) and not self service then they are called "pulpería".
RajT88
> Knowing quite a bit about the world of Costa Rican grocery stores
I love the internet. Mostly.
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adamtaylor_13
Nintendo continues to be petty assholes to ordinary folks around the world.
I don’t know many other companies with such a reputation of petty litigation with dubious claims.
mrandish
> a reputation of petty litigation with dubious claims.
True but recently they've turned much worse by launching a major campaign of unprecedented legal attacks across the historical preservation, retro emulation and fan creation communities. While Nintendo has always been protective of its IP rights, it was mostly limited to piracy of current titles and protecting their trademarks from commercial infringement.
The greatly expanded scope of their recent legal campaign now threatens aspects of non-profit historical preservation and adjacent fan activities unrelated to Nintendo's present day commercial interests. This is new, different and dangerous. Previously, Nintendo's lawyers made at least some effort to distinguish between non-profit or fan hobby activities and piracy or commercial trademark protection. Nintendo changing to now aggressively pursue non-profit retro preservation has made me swear off buying anything from them again.
makeitdouble
The catch is, game preservation touches Nintendo's present day commercial interests, as they fully expanded their offering to "classic" games. Nintendo Online is already that, but I also wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow a playable GameBoy toothbrush was released from Nintendo.
For people looking for an entry point, Moon Channel has been covering this topic pretty in depth (author is a lawyer, but not in trademark per se I think)
djtango
This is the Disney play book - they would only release their classic movies on VHS for limited time before removing them from the shelves, look up the Disney Vault.
The long backward compatibility we enjoyed as kids was a bug not a feature
RajT88
Regular reminder that LikSang was amazing, and killed mostly by Sony, but with help from other console manufacturers:
Jach
I'm not so convinced it's that dangerous, but part of that is a naive sense that if they keep doing more dumb lawsuits, that just means it's more likely for a handful of defendants to actually fight them (as here) and win, which is the way to establish precedent or in the longer term actually get new laws that make things clearer. In this case, hopefully Costa Rica legal fees aren't so bad. Settlements are kind of bad in that regard though -- I'm reminded of the Youtube / Viacom fight that started in 2007 and eventually settled for an undisclosed amount. But in the meantime some bills were raised in committees about forcing site owners to implement things like what later became Content ID; what we got instead was Youtube doing their own proprietary version on their own accord (it probably did help fend off more lawsuits) and the law and courts being silent on the matter. Is that better or worse? What of the "danger"?
I guess another part of me not seeing much danger is because in the extreme, technology has for decades made this a non-problem when it comes to possibility and existence -- my old ROMs aren't going anywhere regardless of what Nintendo does or doesn't do, or what the law does or doesn't become. There's the matter of possibly lessened access and less widespread historical knowledge, which as a gamer I think is a shame, but the archives will survive and devs will continue making emulators for fun, anonymously if they have to. So long as things are available to those who seek them out, that's what I care most about, and that victory has already been won for non-service games.
I don't follow news that closely but I'm also not so sure these are all that new and unprecedented -- Nintendo's always been kind of a dick when it comes to lawfare and fan activities and work. Maybe you can point me to a piece that's looked at the frequency and types of legal activity over the years to compare? Is there anything concrete to suggest I should actually be worried at all about the future availability and development of Dolphin or bsnes or snes9x? I'm somewhat aware of them getting more aggressive with streamers, but the difference there is mainly that streaming and "content creation" are so much bigger now (it's come a long way since Zot the Avenger), so there's a lot more of it and consequently more legal related affairs. To me almost all of it falls under fair use, so whatever, but clearly Nintendo disagrees and Japan itself doesn't have the concept despite having a culture of doujin... (Sega, Capcom, Sony, and other Japanese companies all get my ire as much as Nintendo when it comes to this sort of thing at least.)
makeitdouble
There is virtually no downsides to being petty assholes. People will even come out of the woodwork to justify your behavior and explain you have no choice than being an asshole.
Apple, Disney, Coca Cola, Nike back in the days. Any company with enough money in both marketing and legal department will usually be utter assholes regarding their trademark.
ryandrake
Yes, these companies are so rich, and their targets so comparatively poor, that they're not risking anything by spamming lawsuits. It's like a rich individual going to some developing country and suing poor people for their meager possessions, for no other reason than because they can.
rqtwteye
How else are their armies of lawyers supposed to justify their existence? It's the same as having a ton of UX people on staff who have to constantly move buttons around and change color schemes to stay busy.
marcosdumay
Yes. We should create downsides to being petty assholes.
Moru
The law makes it a nesessity. If they don't do all they can to protect their trademark, they loose it. It's not like copyright.
And ofcourse the lawyers have to make themselves needed somehow.
makeitdouble
This is a purposeful misleading stance propagated by trademark handlers, companies don't have to be assholes:
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/11/trademark-law-does-not...
mihaaly
It is not protecting their trademark man!
You walk in the streets of Costa Rica, see a yellow-blue sign with a shopping chart and ugly characters writing "Super Mario" with some spanish text underneath and then you decide, ah, I will buy games here rather than from Nintendo!
The seconds sentence is more like it. The danger to Nintendo is from their own stupid overacting lawyers.
kobalsky
This is a trademark opposition. If you try to file a trademark that has any common word that any big brand uses in their name, even if you try to register it in a completely different category, they will most likely oppose it.
They do this because trademark folks are lawyers and they get to bill their clients this way, and it's very easy to do since there's software to get notifications on keywords or similar namees. It's probably automated at this point.
pelagicAustral
"Nintendo continues to be petty assholes to ordinary folks around the world."
Never better said... Amen.
lolinder
> This legal victory is a testament to the determination of a small Costa Rican entrepreneur who stood his ground against a global corporation, proving that even the smallest of players can triumph in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Oh, it's you, ChatGPT! I thought I recognized your distinctly bland style.
kennysoona
Related: Paraguay Loves Mickey, Its Cartoon Mouse. Disney Doesn’t - https://archive.ph/4E2Cj
epistasis
I'm reminded of Caterpillar (tractors and some apparel, $50B revenue) trying to stop Cat & Cloud (coffee some apparel, <<$1M) from having a trademark. Despite their low revenue, it's a somewhat influential coffee shop due to their podcast and roasting, and also happens to be the closest cafe to me and my favorite.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/caterpillar-cat-cloud-coffee-...
jihadjihad
It reminds me of that Mike Rowe kid that Microsoft threatened with legal action, because he had a domain for his web design business called MikeRoweSoft.com [0].
IncreasePosts
Let's not forget the goat: nissan.com, owned by Uzi Nissan(RIP), who refused to let the car company steal his domain.
chiph
I have mentioned this before - Uzi was my ISP when I lived in Raleigh and had ISDN service. Cool guy. Still won't buy a Nissan (automobile).
sverhagen
A nitpick, but should they really call it a clash of titans? Maybe rather David versus Goliath?
xyst
Nintendo would rather dump endless amounts of money into law firms, waste time, bully small time players; rather than invest their profits into the company and fixing their god awful network/servers/net code used for multiplayer on the Switch.
Glad they lost.
nosioptar
The overzealous legal action on Nintendo's part of the biggest reason I stopped buying anything Nintendo. I haven't owned a Nintendo since the SNES.
smt88
In unregulated environments, it's often more cost effective to be a bully (in the market or the courts) than to sincerely compete. You can see the same behavior from Meta (which buys competitors instead of innovating) and xAI (which is suing OpenAI).
robertlagrant
We don't have unregulated environments.
nadermx
Previous conversation
Tainnor
There's a driving school called "Autoescuela Super Mario" on Lanzarote (Canary Islands). They're using a lot of Nintendo's branding (fonts, etc.). Somehow I can't imagine that Nintendo agreed to that though.
0xfeba
Reminds me of Nissan dot com lawsuit:
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comput...
nadermx
jeroenhd
A copy on the wayback machine to give context as to why Nissan.com doesn't belong to the car company (despite their lawsuits): https://web.archive.org/web/20200403031920/https://www.nissa...
So, Nintendo of America, whose president is Doug Bowser, and who previously sued a Gary Bowser, had gone to court with a José Mario Alfaro González, who owns the supermarket chain Super Mario.
I'm pretty sure, at this point, they're just joshing us all.