Maricar, the Go-Kart company that insists has no resemblance to Nintendo’s Mario Kart, ordered to stop giving out Mario Kart Costumes already.

If this type of case happened in the United States, say there was a Go-Kart company called NASCAR Karts, and NASCAR went after them, you’d better believe they’d shut down their operation that same day. But in Japan, their justice system is a little kinder to these types of intellectual property cases. As per Phys.Org who first broke the news earlier today (Sept. 27,2018) Akibarha based Japanese Go-Kart Company Maricar was ordered in court to stop handing out Mario Kart costumes to its Go-Kart riders. And this isn’t even the first time Maricar has been brought to court over their clearly “riding off the tailcoats” of Nintendo’s hit game.

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According to “The Japan Times” Maricar and Nintendo have been duking it out for months, if not years, at this point. Earlier last year this alleged copyright infringement was brought towards the court and, at that moment, Nintendo was seeking 10 M Yen in damages or about $88,000.

It looks like that first court battle finally ended earlier this week with Nintendo winning. Although they did not disclose how much money was exchanged in restitution, I’m going to say it was in the neighborhood of that $88,000 above.

Although the article doesn’t quote this line item in the agreement, presumably Nintendo also told Maricar to take out all social media that reflects their intellectual property. Earlier last month I tweeted about Maricar’s blazen rip-off of Mario Kart, and that post on their Instagram is nowhere to be found.

Maricar CLEARLY relies on its resemblance to Mario Kart to survive so you better believe they’re going to come up with some way to skirt this “no costumes rule” yet again, perhaps partner with the shop next door where they can happen to rent Mario Kart costumes.

I’m surprised Nintendo doesn’t slam dunk this case into the ground and shut their operations once and for all.

Perhaps they’re just that nice in Japan.

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