Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp.

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp.
Court	District Court of New Jersey
Full case name	Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp.
Decided	Settled outside of court, 1990
Case history
Prior action(s)	Letter of Request from Nintendo to Blockbuster, requesting cessation of manual reproduction.
Court membership
Judge(s) sitting	Alfred M. Wolin
Case opinions
The photocopying of video game manuals was an infringement of copyright, but the rental of video games was completely legal.

Nintendo of America, Inc. v. Blockbuster Entertainment Corp. is a 1989 legal case related to the copyright of video games, where Blockbuster agreed to stop photocopying game instruction manuals owned by Nintendo. Blockbuster publicly accused Nintendo of starting the lawsuit after being excluded from the Computer Software Rental Amendments Act, which prohibited the rental of computer software but allowed the rental of Nintendo's game cartridges. Nintendo responded that they were enforcing their copyright as an essential foundation of the video game industry.

The dispute began in the late 1980s, when video rental shops began to rent computer software to capitalize on the growing software industry. This practice was legal, thanks to the first-sale doctrine which allows anyone to distribute an instance of a copyrighted work that they have legally purchased. To stop the rental of software, the United States Congress was lobbied by the Software Publishers Association, as well as Microsoft, the WordPerfect Corporation, and Nintendo. The Video Software Dealers Association offered a compromise to the Software Publishers Association, promising to support a prohibition on software rentals if they still allowed the lucrative game cartridge rentals. A draft of the new rental protection bill passed through the Senate Judiciary Committee, prohibiting software rentals for computers while allowing stores to rent Nintendo game cartridges. With no legal remedy to stop the rental of their games, Nintendo sued Blockbuster for reproducing their copyrighted game manuals. Blockbuster quickly ended the practice, and decided to hire third parties to create replacements for any lost or damaged manuals. They settled the lawsuit with Nintendo a year later.

Soon after the settlement, the United States Congress passed the Computer Software Rentals Amendment Act prohibiting software rentals, excluding Nintendo cartridges from similar protections. Although Nintendo criticized the game rental business, they came to accept it, even working with Blockbuster to offer exclusive rental versions of their games. The first-sale doctrine was eventually subverted by end-user license agreements, which describe that the consumer is purchasing a singular, non-transferable license to the software, thus limiting the sale of used software.