Nintendo and its legal teams have some cause for celebration today, especially the latter once they submit their billable hours. Nintendo of America has announced another patent victory in California, while Nintendo of Europe has been tackling mod-chips and 'game copiers' in Italy. There's enough material here for a slightly dull but earnestly-made straight-to-TV legal drama film.
Let's start in North America, where the imaginatively named Technology Properties Limited LLC - along with Phoenix Digital Solutions LLC and Patriot Scientific Corporation - has lost for a second time to the big N. It previously made claims against the cameras of the 3DS and DSi, and it seems that despite losing in early 2014 those companies simply tweaked the claims and moved on to the California federal court. The outcome has been the same, though, with Nintendo prevailing and the 3DS / Wii U being cleared - Ajay Singh, Nintendo of America's Director of Litigation and Compliance, said the following.
We are very pleased with this decision, which again confirmed that Nintendo's products do not infringe. It also confirms that Nintendo continues to develop unique and innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. Nintendo will defend its products and its innovations, even if it must do so multiple times in different places and over many years.
Nintendo of Europe is also keen to be in on the fun, so has celebrated a win in Italy - namely the First Instance Tribunal of Milan - which has reaffirmed the purpose of various mod chips and "game copiers", while confirming that Nintendo's security on its hardware is "fully proportionate and therefore protected under Italian copyright law". In other words, it's still illegal to buy or sell R4 cards etc in Italy, with Nintendo's press release saying the following.
It is unlawful to import and sell circumvention devices under Italian law and sellers could face criminal sentences and fines as well as hefty damages. Nintendo's advice to its fans is "don't fund piracy by purchasing these devices and stay out of the business of selling them".
So there you have it, victory Lattes all around for Nintendo's legal teams.
Comments 14
Love the pic used..from Mario party 10. Toad munching a donut?? Cutest thing EVER?! haha
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS0RA9eCsQk
Nintendo products sales in Italy are going to decrease dramatically now.It already happened before with Sony.Italy hates spending money on things that aren't food,clothes,car-related or soccer-related,even if they can afford it without problems(my own parents don't approve that I buy legal movies and videogames with my pocket money).When I was a kid everybody owned a Playstation 1 or 2 because it was easy to buy cheap pirated games.Now that pirating is way harder,less people buy a PS3/4(and when they do buy it,the only games they purchase are Fifa,Assassin's Creed or GTA)
@Randomname19
I'm sure Nintendo will not lose any sleep over loss of a few more hardware sales because some number of people will be mad because it will be harder for them to steal now.
@Randomname19 Dude...you're defending piracy. Which is illegal. Stop.
@Randomname19 Do you know that gaming company makes their money from softwares? At times these companies sell their consoles at a lost. So yeah, console sales don't mean jack if they can't make software sales.
For some reason I read that as Heard over the Party Poopers.
@NintendoFan64 Dude... do you even read before you react? He said Italians (in general) don't like spending money on electronics etc. so they pirate - he therefore predicts a decrease in hardware sales.
He also says his own parents didn't approve of him buying legal games and videos with his own money instead of pirating! How the hell is that defending piracy!?!
@NintendoFan64 Learn to read.
@Randomname19 @yuwarite @Spideron I apologize for my accusation. I just sort of skimmed over @Randomname19's comment, and I apologize. However, there's still the first thing he said about Nintendo's sales in Italy decreasing dramatically because of this; if people were to steal games for the systems, does it really matter anyway? Anyways, I'm sorry @Randomname19.
Big win for Nintendo. As an international tax lawyer, I can say this win in huge for the big N. Piracy is a huge problem for these companies that derive a vast majority of their profits from IP and software. If you want to play the games. Then buy them. Or, wait a few months and buy them when the price goes down. Do not support piracy.
Yay Nintendo! Also, I'd watch a Nintendo legal drama television series. Have Reggie in the show and I'd be all for it.
well I'm happy for Nintendo and their recent court wins. However I'll still continue to pirate playstation games because paying for them and Nintendo games would stretch my budget too far but if I pay for Nintendo games and pirate playstation games then my wallet wont break. Also it feels nicer to not financially reward the bannermen who betrayed Nintnedo by taking their games to PS1 over N64 which allowed Sony to leverage what made the SNES successful and use it against Nintendo - as a lifelong Nintendo fan I feel these actions are justified even if they're not exactly legal.
As a dude living in The Boot (ciao, @Randomname19) I have to say that the situation is pretty much that. If something can be pirated, it will. No exceptions. And after a brief decrease in piracy, with the DS's success the R4 was something just waiting to happen; when it did, pirating games became "easy" again. No wonder Nintendo had to fix things up in Italy. Still, it's kind of a moot point by now - the 3DS doesn't support flashcards (and will most likely get bricked if one is inserted in it, I don't know), and the with the DS craze over, so is the threat the R4 represents for Nintendo. Sure, there are R4s for the 3DS as well, but get real - you pretty much can't pirate anything with a console that updates its firmware on a whim due to "improved stability" (a wording that's become a source of snark all around here on NL, and rightfully so - it'd have been more respectable if Nintendo outright said "some means of piracy have been targeted and locked" instead of that bee-ess, but I digress... rhyme not intended), so that's like, as we say here in Italy, "locking the doors after the horse has run away".
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