Unless it's a relatively large place or successful, that may not matter. There's stores on wheels which might be considered hotdog stands, or vans that make burritos and Mexican food on the fly. Still with today's economy and how things are, people just don't have extra money at all even if they own a business (and assuming he could sell the business to pay the fine, that just leaves him soon-to-sell everything else just to eat until he's homeless).

There's good research that shows that people's lives are ruined because they can't pay a $60 fine and they get arrested, refined, re-arrested, the $60 blows up to several thousand because they just don't have the money, and don't make enough to cover that crap.

As for what to do with the $4,000 if the pokemon company dropped it and he gets to keep it, i can only hope he buys games and giveaways and maybe hands them out like candy at the next PAX... That's what i'd probably do... Or offer a refund to everyone if the suit is over...

edit: Although it seems the settlement was pulled, not the lawsuit... so... *shrugs*

That's not the point though... the point is he is lying and downplaying his role in the cafe, presumably to make people donate more. (seriously, which would you be more likely to give money to, a struggling fan who works at a cafe, or a business owner who wanted to make profit from copyright material?)

If you buy a pokemon deck, then resell the cards or the deck with a marked up price, you're making a profit from copyrighted material...

Although what I'd consider what's considered 'profit' stupid, especially when it comes to homes.

Still I guess back to the specifics. Him making money off copyrighted materials isn't the issue, it's if he was 'copying' them. Copyright prevents you from making a copy of something without express permission, and that's usually from something in bulk you could make money from (You could make a complete copy by hand of a book, and it's highly doubtful you'd get sued...).

As for how much he'd profit is questionable. Unless it was a raffle or something, he had collected a mild $2 per person for $2000 to be used as prizes, and leftovers aren't exactly profitable unless you have large numbers, or you seriously are cutting back in how much goes into the prizes. Honestly he's not going to make THAT much money in profit at the end of the day, probably no more than youtubers using copyrighted music in the background while you're gaming, as it's the location/theme/people you wanted to be with and around, and although pokemon was a central aspect of it, it wasn't strictly pokemon. Maybe they had a pikachu shaped icecream cake, maybe they made poke-burgers as a bun and play while it's actually hamburgers decorated cleverly. Maybe there was dancing and music; I don't know.

As for downplaying, it's hard to say. I used to work at subway, and one of the owners worked there full time as well (as a manager and working side by side with the rest of us). That wouldn't change the fact he 'worked' at a restaurant even while having an investment in it.

TL;DR: I don't see what the big deal is...

The key difference here is that while reselling Pokemon cards is legal, what this guy did was not. He broke the law, and as a result he got in trouble for it.

Yet another injustice in increasingly big corporation-owned America.

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (current copyright law standard in America) requires copyright holders to first send a "cease and desist" notification to an infringer, who then has a certain amount of time (2 weeks or a month or something like that) to comply or contest the infringement claim.

If the restaurant owner agreed to stop hosting the Pokemon-themed parties immediately after receiving the warning, there should be no further legal proceedings. The $4000 in fees is obviously more insidious corporate bullying against the little people.

But wait, there's more. The U.S. just agreed on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which provides for much more insidious corporate copyright bullying and sets a "guilty until proven innocent" precedent. (there are plenty of articles on that in alternative/non-mainstream news)

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Nintendo's been an asshole about their IP rights for a while, probably because they suck at innovation and all they produce is remakes of the same franchises to perpetually get money from them.

The best way to stop this? Boycott Nintendo and give them no attention. They have a history of taking down YouTube videos of their games - people should just quit posting online videos, reviews, guides, hints, or anything similar on any Nintendo product. Let their online footprint shrink to nothing.

NeoGaf is one of those sites that always report on things like this that riles up the gaming community.

Ooh Nintendo filed lawsuit against a fan, now Nintendo's reputation is going to be soiled for the next few months until another gaming company or figure do something stupid.

Already the #FuckKonami for cancelling Silent Hills is slowing cooling off.
Boycotts mean nothing :P

Actually, #Fucknomai is for bigger reasons such as kicking Hideo out and making Pachislot machines instead of video games.

I understand Kojima getting fired, but the whole Pachinko thing well thats their decision.

Neogaf are rabid Sony fanboys, so it makes sense they would push a negative story about the developer who mostly makes games for Nintendo platforms.

Been doing that since 2007... or earlier... probably earlier...

Do you say that from experiance? Were you a regular in the NeoGaf forums?

Fundamental misunderstanding of what copyright is. The Pokemon Company holds the copyright, they made those cards.

People will never cease to be complete assholes. It's why I don't like them very much.

Don't just read the clickbait OP, if you read the actual story he was using it to promote his café.

It's sounds perfectly right, it's still an asshole move in my opinion. The nice thing would have been "Hey, buddy you can't use our property to advertise your cafe, so please don't do it."

Asshole version - "HAHA! We're going to sue you!"