GadgetGear lawyers claim no Nintendo piracy precedent

Renai LeMay
Wednesday, 03 March 2010 08:54

Your IT - Entertainment

The law firm which recently unsuccessfully defended a local distributor of the R4 cartridge which allows piracy on Nintendo's handheld DS console has warned the case does not set a legal precedent in Australia.

Several weeks ago Nintendo successfully took action against RSJ IT solutions, which operates the GadgetGear.com.au website, with total damages to be $620,000. At the time Nintendo said it was considering pursuing similar action against other sellers of devices that allow games to be illegally copied for use on its consoles.

But in a statement issued yesterday, law firm Berrigan Doube, which represented RSJ, said the legal issues were not decided in the case because it was settled out of court.

'It is incorrect to state that the court had ruled that the respondents had infringed any form of intellectual property of Nintendo through the sale and distribution of the RS4 chip,' the statement in the name of firm director John Cheng and lawyer Damin Murdock.

Cheng said that if the case had proceeded and the court had handed down a judgement, that decision would have offered Australia some clarification in regards to what he said were 'uncertainties in Australian law surrounding the sale of flash cards in gaming consoles'.

'Interestingly, the question also of whether Nintendo is contravening the Trade Practices Act by employing the security measures that can be found in the Nintendo DS also remains open,' he said.