Lik Sang releases an official response to the recent court ruling that awarded damages to Nintendo.
Online importer Lik Sang has officially responded to a recent court ruling that awarded Nintendo $641,000 in damages for the sale of a device that allows users to extract Game Boy game data and then copy it to a blank cartridge. Nintendo says that it has lost more than $650 million in sales over the past year due to piracy, which it claims is promoted by devices such as the one sold by Lik Sang.
"The summary judgment itself was based on Section 273 of the Hong Kong Copyright Ordinance about "circumventing a copy protection,"" said Lik Sang representative Alex Kampl in response to the ruling. "No copy protection exists in the Game Boy or Game Boy Advance game cartridges. The judge didn"t hear a specialist or at least an independent third-party expert opinion--he took it for granted from the explanations by Nintendo that there is copy protection. Furthermore, the judge found that "by analogy with drugs, it [Section 273] is not aimed at the drug addict but at the drug trafficker." I fail to understand his logic, as this would mean that the drug store selling the injection needles to drug addicts or maybe even the manufacturer of the container where the drug addict keeps the drug could be held liable."