Nintendo wins piracy case against Hong Kong firm Lik Sang

June 19, 2003

On the Reuters website we can read that game console manufacturer Nintendo has won an anti-piracy case against the Hong Kong-based Lik Sang company. The company was sued by Nintendo for selling mod chips, flash linkers and many other console modifying products:

In the ruling, a Hong Kong judge ordered Lik Sang
International on May 29 to pay an interim amount of HK $ 5 million
(US $ 641,000) in damages, Nintendo said. A Lik Sang representative could
not immediately be reached for comment.

Kyoto-based Nintendo had sought US million in damages in its original complaint for lost revenues in 2001 and 2002, in a case that underscored the problem of rampant software piracy in China and adjacent Hong Kong.

The device at the heart of the complaint costs about
US and is capable of bypassing security features in Nintendo Game Boy
games to extract their software, said Jodi Daugherty, director of
anti-piracy for Nintendo of America Inc. Once the software is extracted,
it can be put on cards for use in other Game Boy consoles or uploaded to
the Internet for limitless downloads throughout the world, she said.

"This was an important case for Nintendo in battling Internet piracy at its source," Daugherty told Reuters in a phone interview from the United States. "We're continuing to take aggressive actions in China."

According to the article video game piracy has kept the world's major players out of China. Nintendo estimates that it and its partners lost about $ 650 million USD in sales last year due to piracy.

Source: Reuters