The Universal City Studios v. Nintendo case was a major copyright and trademark lawsuit in the early 1980s. In 1982, Sid Sheinberg wanted the company to enter the video game market but saw Nintendo as a threat. Universal City Studios threatened to sue Nintendo claiming that their game "Donkey Kong" illegally copied Universal's rights to King Kong.
This case became one of the most important early legal battels in the video game industry. It helped define how copyright applies to video games, how far character and concept protection extended, and how large media corporations cannot control creative concepts from other companies just because they're deemed more "important" by society.
