Nintendo, Capcom sue to stop DS piracy in Japan

15.10.2009
Nintendo has joined forces with 54 other companies like Tecmo and Square Enix to file suit against four retailers accused of distributing of the R4 Revolution flash cart, a common tool for running illegal software on the Nintendo DS.

For the uninitiated (which should be all of you) the R4 is a flash cart with a MicroSD adapter that permits pirates to install a custom operating system shell on their DS which can load ROMs downloaded onto the MicroSD card and play them back on the handheld.

The plaintiffs in this case have filed an injunction with the Tokyo District Court to halt the sale and distribution of the R4 and collect financial compensation for damages the product has caused.

It should be noted that the companies obtained a court ruling in February of this year banning the sale of the R4 in Japan. However, software manufacturers like Nintendo still feel that too many of the devices are available and have pursued further legal action under Japan's Unfair Competition Prevention Act. Capcom press officials released the following statement:

"...Since we observe many cases that the vendors ignore our warning or the vendors do not show any sincere response to our warning, we decided to take legal action at this time.

"We are expecting the entire society including users to recognise that our company and other software manufactures have extremely sustained damages from proliferation of illegal instruments, such as the game copying devices, and the computer industries have sustained serious damages because of those vendors, and we expect to influence the society to eliminate such illegal instruments from the market."