Nintendo’s legal team is on a quest to stop Pokémon fan sites from posting screenshots from its games.

Kotaku reports the gaming monolith has gone after at least two sites for using images of the upcoming DS games Pokémon Black and Pokémon White, threatening to shut the sites down under the Digital Milennium Copyright Act unless the offending photos were removed.

One of the sites, PokéBeach, renamed itself PokerBeach after it received this salvo:

We recently learned that you have posted screenshots and other protected content from the Pokémon Black and Pokémon White games to your website at http://pokebeach.com. While Nintendo appreciates your interest in and support of the Pokémon game series, your publication of this content infringes Nintendo’s copyrights in violation of federal law. Your activity also and has the potential to cause substantial damage to Nintendo, and leaves Nintendo with no choice but to take steps to protect its intellectual property rights.

Fansite Serebii received a similar talking-to.

As Kotaku points out, Nintendo lets other video game sites run wild, posting scores of screenshots and videos. We contacted Nintendo’s PR agency for comment and here is the response from Nintendo of America’s senior director of Corporate Communications:

Nintendo supports and appreciates the efforts that Pokémon fans go through to create fan sites. In most cases there is no issue with the content that is posted, but on this occasion we had to contact a select few websites to ask them to take down confidential images.

Report: Nintendo Threatens Pokémon Website For Showing Pictures Of Pokémon [Kotaku]

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