Funimation Files Infringement Suit Against N Trading Inc.

Funimation has entered into preliminary litigation proceedings against the operators of DiscountAnimeDVD.com, BuyDVD.com, DOES, and the Anime Nuts retail store.  

The preliminary filing, which was entered in August by Funimation also seeks over 23.7 million in damages from copyright infringement on top of an additional $580,500 in legal fees stemming from the sale of alleged unauthorized copies of Fruits Basket, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Dragonball GT, and Fullmetal Alchemist from March 2002 to as recently as one month ago.

Further allegations also suggest that the defendant willfully ignored repeated requests to remove the DVD’s that were found to infringe against Funimation’s copyright as well as TV Tokyo, Square Enix, and Shueisha’s trademarks as far back as April of this year when the discovery was first made, with N Trading going as far as rehosting their sales sites on a Korean webhost after the domestic webhost was notified of the activity leading to the first shutdown.

Funimation has also made a request in the suit that all customers who purchased the above mentioned DVDs should be entitled to complete refunds with paid shipping by the defendant, as the company claims that the DVDs sold were not authentic Funimation DVDs, as well as requesting the destruction of all equipment used in the commission of the unlawful activity. 

The suit names Richard Ro as the primary contact for the above mentioned entity, and the defendant has countered with ten lines of defense alleging fair use, good faith in the resale of legitimate products, and that the allegations brought forth in Federal District Court are unfounded.  The parties are scheduled to meet in Federal court November 17th to begin scheduling proceedings.