Nintendo loses legal battle involving Super Mario supermarket

Nintendo typically comes out on top regarding legal battles, but the company was recently unsuccessful in a dispute involving a supermarket with the Super Mario name.

A man named Don Mario has been running the shop in San Ramón, Costa Rica for decades. Recently though, his son Charlito attempted to renew the trademark that was already registered. That’s when Nintendo stepped in, claiming that it owns the Super Mario rights. It’s true that it belongs to Nintendo in many different areas, but supermarkets are an exception. 

Charlito wrote the following in a post on Facebook:

I’m so happy that we won a renowned international Video Game brand a trademark registration process for Costa Rica.

As you know, we have been calling ourselves Super Mario for many years and that name coincides with one of the most famous brands in the world.

When I graduated from the U (2013), I set out to give the business a corporate image and register the name for the grocery store category.

At that time it was achieved, however, last year it was time to make the renewal and guess what, as we have made it known on social networks, the multinational struck the ring and claimed that Super Mario belongs to them globally.

They have a lot of categories listed, video games, clothing, collectibles, toys, school supplies, ornaments, etc. But not the sale of groceries and that’s why the National Register failed in our favor.

Thank you enormously to my legal advisor and accountant José Edgardo Jimenez Blanco who took care of the registration and the subsequent fight for the right to a trademark.

For a moment we thought about throwing in the towel, how were we going to win the pulse to such a commercial monster? More with the amount of legal documents submitted by them to ensure the victory.

Well, by that Edgardo and I stood firm and a few days ago we received the good news.

This is a giant step towards the vision we have and for such a big company to get picky, it’s because we’re getting noticed.

Super Mario is here to stay.

You can check out the logo for the Super Mario supermarket below. You’ll notice that there’s nothing there suggesting an affiliation with Nintendo – the mascot plumber is nowhere to be seen. There’s also the tagline “Super Mario – Your trusted place”, which again is not at all Nintendo-related.