Nintendo wins piracy case in Hong Kong

According to a recent Reuters report, Nintendo has won what it describes as one of its most significant antipiracy judgments ever against Hong Kong-based Lik Sang International. In its original complaint Nintendo asked for $20 million in damages for lost revenues in 2001 and 2002, a figure that dwarfs the interim amount of around $641,000 that Lik Sang has been ordered to pay.

The product at the heart of the complaint was selling at Lik Sang for around $45 and enabled users to bypass the security features of Game Boy games so that the software could be extracted and then distributed via blank cartridges or the Internet. Nintendo estimates that it lost around $650 million in sales last year because of piracy, and the entire industry might have lost in excess of $3 billion.

"This was an important case for Nintendo in battling Internet piracy at its source," said Jodi Daugherty, director of antipiracy at Nintendo of America. "We're continuing to take aggressive actions in China."