Nintendo wins piracy claim against Lik-Sang


Flack

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Thursday, June 19, 2003 - 9:28 am CT
Nintendo Wins Piracy Case

Judges have ruled in favor of Nintendo in the piracy case against Lik Sang. Lik Sang is a popular website where users can buy imports and accessories - but the site has also sold items capable of copying Nintendo games and putting them on the Internet for downloading. Illegal copies were being sold for as little as one dollar in some parts of China. Legal copies of the software can run as high as $45. Nintendo - which has always had a no tolerance stance against piracy - sued Lik Sang for $20 million. The judge has awarded Nintendo $5 million for damages caused by Lik Sang in 2000 and 2001. Nintendo believes they and their partners lost $650 million in sales due to piracy and that the industry as a whole lost $3 billion. Nintendo has conducted about three-quarters of their 125 raids in China with the help of Chinese trademark enforcement authorities. Nintendo stated the amount of raids doubled from 2001 to 2002 and will continue to increase.
 
Yeh, crikey, just checked their site, and all of their GBA linkers and flash carts have gone, all that's left is the MultiBoot Cable V2.
 
Lik-sang changed hands to Pacific Trading Group, and won't be going under
 
Yeah, this news is pretty old...I think everyone just assumed the case was over before. I mean, I'm surprised that the companies didn't settle...not that I know anything about law :p
 
Indeed, all this happened quite a long time ago, and they bankrupted liksang to avoid having to pay anything, and reopened the next day as pacific gaming.

Liksang were a major manufacturer of mod chips, flash carts/linkers & black cd's (psx).

As far as i understand it the case was nintendo, sony and microsoft v liksang, not just nintendo as the article claims.

-Craig

www.gbax.com
 
Nintendo win big fat damages from Lik-Sang, because obviously all their problems are due to flash cards. Already standing at HK$5 million, the final damage figure hasn't even been decided yet.
 
SPLASH! Loonie lands in the water, missing the boat completely.

So I just noticed the other thread. :p
-- note by Rico: merged threads :) --

Blame it on my anger and disgust as yet another big company competes on the strength of it's lawyers, and finds another scapegoat for it's failing antique business model.
 
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hey man.. can you really blame nintendo (+co.)?
I mean, sure, it stinks fo rthose of us who enjoy the fruits of lik-sang's labor... I have GBC flash linker + card, GBA linker + card, just so I don't come off as 'holier than thou or whatever.. but seriously, these things make the most money by being sold to people who DON'T INTEND TO BUY CARTRIDGES. Yes, there is a 'huge' homebrew and emulation and etc. scene for all these systems, and that's great - but honestly, I would strongly suspect that most of the game boy flashkit buyers are only thinking of one things, free commercial roms downloaded from the internet. That cuts into nintendo's bread and butter, they have every right to try and strike back at a company with as much prestige as liksang.

Am I happy about it? no. I enjoy the emu and homebrew scenes. Free ROMS are a nice side effect I guess, but I spend 95% o fmy time (at least) ignoring them, like many on this board I am a classicgaming enthusiast. Do I want to see liksang and their bretheren get destroyed by Nintendo etc.? Not really, it hurts the whole emu+homebrew scene if the devices aren't available, so that negatively affects me. But, I DO agree witht heir moral right to go after these guys, judging by what I said above.

Liksang doesn't care what these devices are used for, they want to make money. They seem to present a "homebrew + backup" stance, but they have not taken ANY steps at all to prevent commercial roms from being played on their devices, and that is why they'll be in trouble -- Nintendo would have a lot less interest in them if this was only about homebrew and emulation of older Nintendo systems. Frankly, I am surprised they lasted THIS long.

And in spite of everything, all this will do is generate more publicity for the flashkits and the scenes, the hydra head that is liksang gets cut off and more grow in it's place to meet the newer, larger demand.. Nintendo's ultimately at fault for not devising better copy protection, cartridges are just not a 'safe' media they way they use them.

And so it goes.
 
that silly bastards earn enough with the gameboy they should stop with that shit lik-sang is da best of da best :ph34r:
 
as far as i know only nintendo sued them (maybe microsoft) but im pretty sure that sony didnt cause i only know people who got chips in their ps2 and thats a damn huge community :D
 
that silly bastards earn enough with the gameboy they should stop with that shit lik-sang is da best of da best :ph34r:
But they're selling something that allows people to break the law. Nintendo have every right to go after them. Lik-sang are probably the highest profile name for this kind of hardware so it's understandable that they'd get hit first. I doubt they'll go after the smaller companies though.
 
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then they should sue against verbatim for their cdrs its the same.......u can use the gba flash linker and the cdrs for security backups but hey..........nintendo sux.....................
 
that silly bastards earn enough with the gameboy they should stop with that shit lik-sang is da best of da best :ph34r:
But they're selling something that allows people to break the law. Nintendo have every right to go after them. Lik-sang are probably the highest profile name for this kind of hardware so it's understandable that they'd get hit first. I doubt they'll go after the smaller companies though.
God damnit, that's good 4 gamepark. Nintendo has to learn that the small companies have to come in a few times.

And L1K-54N6 FUCK1N6 RULEZ BRU7H4!!!11 (and yes thats me speaking "1337 1D107!!1")
 
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But they're selling something that allows people to break the law. Nintendo have every right to go after them.
Owning a car equips you with all you need to break the law. A processor of any kind could be used to run pirate software, so supplying someone with a CPU is selling people something that allows them to break the law. You could stab someone with a kitchen knife, strangle someone with a rope, you could even bludgeon someone to death with an Xbox. All those activities are against the law. You could use a telephone to phone someone up, impersonating a police officer or whaever takes your fancy, and defraud valuable information from someone. Then use that information to commit another crime.

And so on.
 
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