Nintendo Australia today said it could take similar action against other sellers of devices that allow games to be illegally copied for use on its consoles, after it won a $620,000 victory against one such firm this week.

In a statement today the company confirmed news broken yesterday that it had successfully taken action against local group RSJ IT Solutions, which trades as GadgetGear and the individual directors of the company, Patrick Li and James Li. The company had been selling the R4 cartridge locally. Yesterday, RSJ declined to comment on the case.

The device — which is popular internationally — runs its own operating system for Nintendo’s DS handheld device. Individual games and other applications, some of them purporting to be legal, can be downloaded from the internet as small files and simply added to the chip’s storage.

The cartridge is then slotted into the top of a Nintendo DS as any other cartridge would be. It does not permanently modify the handheld console and is sold by a number of Australian and international distributors.

“Nintendo will pursue those who attempt to jeopardise the gaming industry by using all means available to it under the law. In particular, Nintendo is currently contemplating bringing further actions against other sellers of game copying devices in Australia,” the manufacturer of popular game series like Mario and Zelda said in its statement.

The result of the court action was understood to be a settlement that came in the form of Federal Court orders.

According to Nintendo’s statement, GadgetGear had acknowledged that the devices it was selling infringed Nintendo’s copyright and trademarks and were “illegal circumvention devices” that the company will now refrain from importing or selling.

“GadgetGear and the directors will also pay Nintendo a total of A$620,000 by way of damages. GadgetGear will also be delivering to Nintendo all its stock of game copiers for destruction,” Nintendo said.

The game company said since 2008, it had pursued over 800 actions in 16 countries to stop game piracy, confiscating “well over” half a million game copiers for the Nintendo DS. The company said piracy affected sales, the price of video games, and employment in the video game industry.

“The existence of piracy jeopardises the strength of the video game industry overall,” Nintendo said.

The news comes as Nintendo Australia has taken other recent actions to ramp up its fight against game piracy. Last week it was revealed that it had successfully sued a Queensland resident for uploading to the internet a copy of its Wii game New Super Mario Bros a week before its Australian release in November last year. The Queenslander — named by multiple media outlets as James Burt — will pay Nintendo $1.5 million.

Image credit: Nintendo

Related posts:

1. Customs seizes Nintendo R4 imports
2. Nintendo wins DS modchip lawsuit
3. Is Nintendo being too harsh?
4. GadgetGear lawyers claim no Nintendo piracy precedent
5. Customs regularly seizes Nintendo fakes

Tweet

1. Fungyo
   Posted 20/02/2010 at 10:34 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Nintendo = scum.
   Was looking to buy a WII and a couple of DSs, I’ve changed my mnd.

2. anon
   Posted 21/02/2010 at 4:40 am | Permalink | Reply

   “piracy affected sales, the price of video games”

   The higher the prices, the more will people pirate, the more people pirate, the higher will be the prices.

   An old circle that’s never going to breakout. Too bad.

3. Renai LeMay
   Posted 21/02/2010 at 6:22 pm | Permalink | Reply

   @Fungyo heh fair call, but if you don’t buy a DS at least, you’ll be missing out on a lot of cool games ;) The Wii hasn’t had much good for a while though.

   @anon I definitely think video games are generally priced too high at the moment. $119 for a new release game that may only have 10-15 hours of entertainment in it is too much. I normally wait for games to come down in price substantially before I buy.

4. Fungyo
   Posted 21/02/2010 at 9:57 pm | Permalink | Reply

   @Renai, i don’t care for one myself, but my kids would like one, so I thought I would just buy a console with games second hand. That way we can enjoy the DS without paying money to nintendo.

   I reckon they use piracy as an excuse for high prices. The truth is IMO that prices would be much higher if it were not for piracy.
   Nintendos actions exposes their greed.

5. Renai LeMay
   Posted 22/02/2010 at 6:21 am | Permalink | Reply

   @Funyo well there is a thriving secondhand market out there, which I think a lot of games makers don’t necessarily approve of.

6. Kaze
   Posted 01/03/2010 at 9:28 am | Permalink | Reply

   see, now, nintendo started getting greedy around mid-cycle of the lifespan of the GBA; that’s about when they realized how much fun having money was. up until then, games were good, nintendo was nice to customers, there were actual people in customer service and there were more people in repairs, and nintendo hated lawyers just as much as we do. they were just a bunch of crazy japanese kids who loved video games. then, the americans got a share of it- adding their own managers, pulling in attorneys and replacing anyone who didn’t do it for the money. now, their only goal is to make their products work like windows- uncompatible with anything not from them, sometimes not even working with other stuff from them, and needing frequent patches and updates that they make only for the purpose of turning the systems into vegetables.

7. Renai LeMay
   Posted 03/03/2010 at 12:24 am | Permalink | Reply

   My main problem with Nintendo atm is just not enough damn games. There hasn’t been a decent game I have wanted to play on my Wii for ages. However, I do have a DS, and that is still going strong — currently on Appollo Justice :)