 So today a popular twitch and tiktok you know quote-unquote star I suppose I mean they had almost two million followers named polka princess has been sued by Nintendo which she's had to change her username and actually make payments to Nintendo and why is this the case well it's actually something I want to cover specifically because hello I obviously am using technically a copyrighted name in my channel name we're called Nintendo Prime I do not own the word Nintendo clearly Nintendo owns that word so is this something I'm gonna have to worry about and what things have I done differently to perhaps avoid some of the issues that polka princess has worked with now I've actually worked with Nintendo in the past you figure that might give you some leeway but legally I mean I could always face some issues but before I get into this I want to remind you got a couple giveaways going on the first is for a Nintendo switch a Xbox Series X and a PlayStation 5 the second and maybe most important is for Pikmin 3 Deluxe we're giving away two copies of that to enter head down in the description we're also on our road to a hundred thousand subscribers so hey like this video you know subscribe to the channel comment down below all that jazz hit that bell icon so you're notified when all of our new content goes up and be sure to hey check us out on twitch at twitch.tv or whatever it is by YouTube my my twitch channel over there is Nintendo Prime TV look it up there'll be a link down in the description of that as well we do do exclusive streams now over on Twitter just have one the other day where we gave away a couple $20 ish up gift cards are tried to anyways we'll be doing that again here later this week all right let's get into this so you know so polka princess is someone I've never heard of because I'm not a tiktok person right I don't I don't use tiktok I don't even think it's installed on my phone right now I've dabbled in it before because my kids were interested in some stuff on it but I don't really look at tiktok that much but polka princess is very popular in tiktok 1.9 followers she also happens at 50,000 people following her on twitch where she does live streams and stuff like that of course it is twitch but the issue came up not so much I think about her username but some things that she's done that are very very interesting so she did two different things one she trademarked her username all right that that's that's typically something you're gonna want to do when you're a business and you have a brand now there are ways to work around having to trademark specific names but I'll get into that in a moment and then the other thing is she was selling merchandise and I sell merchandise as well I think only like four people ever have bought part of it I have a link down in the description if you care to buy merchandise but the point is that she trademarked her username and created merchandise inspired by the Pokemon franchise obviously with her username being polka princess you could tell she's a big Pokemon fan and the imagery included things like polka ball mew obviously these are copyrighted things now typically you might be like but I go on fan sites all the time and I go to t-public I go to all these other websites they have tons of Nintendo copyrighted stuff on there that's right they do but while Nintendo hasn't gone after sites like that and shut down those designs from those creators they also don't have trademarked names associated with it they kind of make it a business right it's just a one-off fan selling some sort of you know quote unquote fan art design even though some of the designs are clearly just the official art but anyways we're not here to debate about that we're here to talk about this person polka princess so the star has taken to YouTube to explain why she changed her channel name because she had to suddenly change her channel name she dropped polka from the name she'll be now we know as digital princess and she said I was young and dumb and was just going full force with it because I didn't know what I was doing wrong she received a cease and desist from Nintendo and believes that it may have been issued thanks to the merchandise imagery her trademark and the fact that she also works in the adult entertainment industry that's something to consider as well the industry she works in is something Nintendo does not want to be associated with assuming that Nintendo might have wanted to distend itself to keep its family-friendly image all right so Nintendo Ninjas kind of did their thing so here's my thing I think she clearly was gone after because she trademarked her name and then sold the merch I don't know that the adult entertainment industry connection had anything to really do with it I don't honestly think that that is something that Nintendo would even mention in a lawsuit I think that clearly if she didn't trademark her name it just sold merchandise that had Nintendo stuff on it they probably wouldn't care as much but Pokemon company do Pokemon companies really strict they shut down a gathering at a bar right there was an advertised gathering at a bar for this group of Pokemon fans that had like a Pikachu image with it or something and literally the Pokemon company shut that gathering down not letting fans gather to celebrate Pokemon on their own because the advertisement which by the way wasn't something that like they were making money off of was using an official image from from Pokemon so Pokemon itself is very very restrictive with the use of their imagery that's where you get the issues with the with the merchandise but then you also have the fact that polka was used in a trademark so here's where I get to avoid some of this legal mumbo-jumbo because I have Nintendo and anyone obviously Nintendo is in Pokemon so Nintendo is a lot less restrictive than the Pokemon companies but Nintendo is notoriously restrictive as well with some of their stuff so one my logo is 100% originally made it is inspired by my logo is inspired by Obama right I think anyone who you know kind of looks at it squints their eyes can tell hey look my logo for Nintendo Prime is a bomb on but it's not a bomb on that's using any art assets from Nintendo it's 100% originally made for my channel so well it's inspired by that is legally allowed you are legally allowed to be inspired by other art but make it 100% your own so yes that is one way that I get around it it's not trying to be called a bomb on it's clearly just a symbol based on a Nintendo thing but not using any of their assets now the Nintendo Prime name for those who don't know my YouTube channel and my Twitch and Twitter and Facebook and the Discord server everything that has Nintendo Prime's brand name attached to it is legally a business so as much as we talk about how I do this for fun oh I you know I'm just a hobby all that because I make money doing it right I get I have a contract with Google and YouTube to make money I have a contract with Twitch to make money I have a contract with merchandise you know people when I sell merchandise so I have a contract with Streamlabs as well to accept donations during livestreams everything has a legal binding contract and on that contract you have to have a business because this is all a business this is all business income they don't tax the money from you you need to pay the taxes yourself that's just how this stuff works so like when you get paid from YouTube and Google they don't take taxes out of that paycheck because you are a contract employee you need to pay the taxes on your own your business needs to pay the taxes on their own and yes because the way that this money comes to you you pay business taxes you don't pay personal income taxes you pay business taxes which by the way business taxes are often higher than personal income taxes now there are workarounds with this depending on how you set your business up you could you could have your business set up as say an LLC which is a standalone business and then you're an employee of that business and then you can lower your tax rate on the business by having a certain percentage of all revenue that comes into the company be considered a personal paycheck and have that go to a separate account it's a big thing it has to go to a separate account and then when it's in that separate account you would pay normal income taxes versus business taxes that's one way to reduce your taxes there's a lot of people that do that and LLCs are really great because they also protect you and your assets so let's say I do something with my channel that Nintendo hates and Nintendo Prime gets sued if Nintendo Prime got sued my personal income and my personal assets cannot be touched the only assets I could lose in the lawsuit would be you know the channel itself all associated connected you know social media so you know twitter and all that jazz and they could seize anything that's a work only device and I have to be a work only device so like the camera that I use to record what they could seize that they could seize any of the merchandise I have in my house they could seize any you know maybe even some of the lights I have that are exclusively for this I do not use for anything else you know they could maybe even take my microphones or something I don't know but what they can't take is they can't take my car they can't take my house they can't take my TVs they can't take my even my video game systems because they are used outside of business so the point is that when you turn your company into an LLC you are personally protected so if polka you know trademarking her name and all stuff if she if she had created a business around LLC none of her personal assets could have been touched it could only be business assets and if the business doesn't have the money in the bank to pay the fees they can't take that money out of your personal paycheck income they can't touch that money all they could do is seize assets from the quote-unquote company to fulfill it and the company doesn't have the assets it is what it is it can go bankrupt but you are protected so the company could be bankrupt but you're not I hope this makes sense it gets really technical that's not how I'm actually set up though but it is something that I will be setting up at some point right now I run everything under a sole proprietorship so what that means is everything is basically registered to my name legally so when I say hey this is Nathaniel Ruffle Jance from Nintendo Prime well here's the thing Nathaniel Ruffle Jance is the name of my legal business I am I'm a registered sole proprietorship owner in in the state of Wisconsin so I am a legal business and what Nintendo Prime is is an entity that is part of that business so if Nintendo wanted to sue me they wouldn't sue Nintendo Prime they would sue the business of Nathaniel Ruffle Jance the big thing here and this is why I don't go for trademarks is one I know that Nintendo is a trademark name if I go for a trademark for Nintendo Prime that's not going to work but what I can do what I can do is trademark my name the Nathaniel Ruffle Jance and then the business is protected under that full trademark so Nintendo Prime being a subsidiary of that business would be would have some protections other people could technically use that Nintendo Prime name and brand if they want but there would be some legal protections there for it being a business that's owned underneath my name now there's some things I could do about this you know as I said mentioned when you set up an LLC often you don't want to set up like set it up as like Nintendo Prime LLC you want to set it up like Prime Gaming LLC or something and then Nintendo Prime is a subsidiary you always want to keep the main brand of your thing whether you know it's Nintendo Prime or whatever you always want to keep that as a subsidiary rather than the main branch you all you never want to register your main name as like that is the business name because you put a lot at risk when you do that because then everything is tied to that name rather than to the protections that exist as a subsidiary so what happened here is that Poker Princess is not a subsidiary it is just a person out there who decided I want to trademark my name and yeah I'm sure for the money that she made she obviously I probably had a sole proprietorship set up on Twitch and stuff like that I don't know how money on Tic Tac works I don't know if there's ads I'm not sure if she just gets sponsors or something but the point is that she probably has a sole proprietorship and then she was trying to trademark a brand name which when you trademark a brand name it gets a little it gets a little technical in how the business side works but reality is this was a red flag to Nintendo and then that red flag led to them discovering that she's selling Pokemon related merchandise and the Pokemon company probably got pissed the fuck off and they went after her and yep she had to change her name they're she's lucky that Nintendo isn't ceasing her assets because they had a right legally to cease her Tic Tac account and cease her Twitch and and take her YouTube and all of her social media they could have done that and left her as a business sole proprietorship alone but they didn't and said they they're forcing her to change her branding and to pay whatever the fine it is which they're probably determining for the trademark filing violating uh Nintendo and the Pokemon company's rights and then whatever they determine the uh money lost was on merchandise sales I don't know how much merchandise sold with that you know 1.9 people on on Tic Tac she could have probably sold quite a bitter merch I don't know if it's hundreds of thousands of dollars but I find this whole thing interesting because a lot of people starting out use branding of their favorite companies in their channels including me but they do so without understanding the full legal repercussions of doing that and it's not like Nintendo themselves hates everything like if you guys remember Alex Captain Nintendo dude he's back he's doing he's doing YouTube streams and all that but back when he was in the good graces of Nintendo waiting in line to be the first to get a switch first to get Mario Odyssey and Splatoon and all this jazz and having Reggie sign his systems and and Doug Bowser and all this like he was actually you know Nintendo really really like the guy well obviously the name of his channel was CND aka Captain Nintendo dude but his official logo and everything was completely custom made so the thing is that Nintendo will generally leave you alone if you're customizing things like if she created she did not try to file a trademark and left her name alone and just left her to the sole proprietorship and then when she was doing the merchandise which I'm sure the merchandise vendor told her she should trademark her name but if she when she went to make that merchandise if she had used a lot more let me see artistic depictions of Pokemon rather than going with like you know Mew which looks like almost an official art kind of Mew in the shirt that we saw earlier if she would have went with a really more um a lot more artistic like if someone were to Picasso rate or something she would have been able to sell that uh so and with a pokeball it's really hard to change up the pokeball design enough to not upset Nintendo um so I don't know if she would have even been able to use that pokeball design uh but I yeah it's just it gets really sticky when you're dealing with this and I wanted to throw this out there because I know there's a lot of people out there a lot of other content creators a lot of other people that we interested in finding out why did this person get get tagged and how can I avoid it um it it's a really nuanced complicated thing some of it's dumb luck that they just don't notice what you're doing and you get away with it for a while uh but I'm protected um when I have a I have a lawyer for my business uh but beyond that I I'm also protected uh because I don't use any of Nintendo's direct assets and any official branding or merch that I sell all my merchandise is my my logo that's 100% a custom made logo uh and and then the name of my channel I don't use any Nintendo art assets and if you guys ever wonder why don't you release t-shirts that have like no Nintendo characters on it why don't you release t-shirts that because I can't legally from a legal perspective I can't be doing that that's begging Nintendo to come after me so if you ever wonder why I don't have you know that kind of stuff I can't do it now can I do catchphrases yeah but the catchphrases have to be unique to my channel I can't take quotes from a Nintendo game you know it's dangerous to go alone and throw that on the show I can't do that technically technically I am you know getting right up there getting close to you know copyright infringement so there's a lot of nuance here but I hope you guys learned something thank you so much for tuning in I'm Nathan Robodance from the Tuna Prime and I'll catch you in the next one