Nintendo loses legal battle against supermarket named “Super Mario”

A small supermarket in Costa Rica named Super Mario came under fire from Nintendo, with the video game giant claiming that the supermarket using that name was copyright infringement.

Nintendo has a reputation for being particularly litigious, using legal proceedings to shut down anything from fan projects and emulators to YouTube videos. If anything can be seen as using Nintendo IP without permission, their legal team is quick to shut it down.

This extended even to a small grocer in Costa Rica named Super Mario, a store that’s been around with that very same name for over 50 years.

Rather than folding to Nintendo and changing the store’s name, Super Mario owner José Mario Alfaro González fought the company for the rights to keep it. And he actually won.

Super Mario wins legal battle against Nintendo

According to a report from local publication Tico Times, it’s pretty common for the word “super” to be used as an offhand way to refer to supermarkets. In other words, Super Mario basically just means Mario’s supermarket.

The suit from Nintendo came from when González attempted to register his store’s trademark and re-secure the name for themselves, with Nintendo of America filing an appeal against his request claiming that Super Mario is a name that belongs to them and them alone.

And, while González and his legal team considered changing the store’s name to avoid litigation, they decided to fight Nintendo instead. It paid off.

Super Mario | Facebook

“We knew these big companies have vast resources to fight, and we had to think carefully,” González’s legal representative told the Tico Times.

They won the battle on January 21, with Super Mario winning their rights to keep the name.

“We refuted all of Nintendo’s arguments, demonstrating their errors and our rightful claim,” the lawyer explained. He said that, though Nintendo’s registration as a company covers a wide number of areas, they don’t supply food products on a wide enough basis to keep Super Mario from officially registering their name as a grocer.

With Super Mario’s legal team leaning into this argument, they were able to pull out a big win in this case. Often, when a big company like Nintendo threatens litigation against small businesses, they fold and avoid the legal battle. In this rare case, fighting back paid off for Super Mario.