Nintendo Drags Japanese Firms To Court over DS Piracy

The lawsuit filed in court seeks to restrain five Japanese companies from marketing, selling, and importing Nintendo DS flash carts like the R4 chip which allows pirated Nintendo DS games to be played.
Reports claim that Nintendo is using the Unfair Competition Prevention Law to pin down the culprits. Nintendo argues that the sale of this chip is crippling the growth of the entire games industry in Japan.

The R4’s function is simple: it is a direct conduit for illegal game downloads and other unofficial software. Built to fit into the DS’s existing game cartridge slot, the R4 will transfer on to the console anything saved on a removable flash memory chip.

In a statement supplementary to the lawsuit, Nintendo argued that these devices "allow illegal uploading from the Internet" and are no doubt "causing severe damage to our company and software makers, and this is something that we cannot possibly overlook."

The device costs just over $35 and can virtually give unlimited passport to illegally downloaded software titles for the Nintendo DS, the handheld games console that has made Japan and the entire world crazy

Source Timesonline