Japanese game maker Nintendo says it has won one of its "most significant antipiracy judgments ever" against a Hong Kong company that sold devices capable of copying its games and putting them on the Net for limitless downloading.
In the recent ruling, a Hong Kong judge ordered Lik-Sang International to pay an interim amount of $641,000 (5 million Hong Kong dollars) in damages, Nintendo said Thursday.
A Lik-Sang representative could not immediately be reached for comment.
Kyoto-based Nintendo had sought $20 million in damages in its original complaint for lost revenue in 2001 and 2002, in a case that underscored the problem of rampant software piracy in China and adjacent Hong Kong.
The device at the heart of the complaint costs about $45 and is capable of bypassing security features in Game Boy games to extract their software, said Jodi Daugherty, director of antipiracy for Nintendo of America.