French court favours DS flash cart seller

Nintendo has said it is "extremely disappointed" by the ruling made by Paris' Criminal Court last week in favour of flash cart sellers, but that it will appeal the decision.

The court found Max Louarn, his company Divineo, and other co-defendants not guilty in the criminal case, despite Nintendo's prevailing in a similar case against Divineo France in a Hong Kong court last year.

Nintendo says that, as a victim, it will now join the prosecutor's appeal against the judgement.

"The Divineo France company had already been prohibited by a Hong Kong court to manufacture, market or export products intended to circumvent Nintendo’s technical prevention measures," read the Nintendo statement.

"In 2008, the Hong Kong court handed down two judgements ordering Max Louarn and Divineo France to pay Nintendo EUR 44,605,082 damages. Nintendo is yet to receive these damages and is seeking enforcement of the judgements through the court at Avignon.

"Nintendo maintains that infringement of its intellectual property rights, on its trademarks, software, its technical prevention measures and its videogames is causing damage to the whole videogame industry, preventing developers from gaining the full benefit of their hard work and creativity, but also to the customers who expect the highest standards and integrity from products bearing the Nintendo name."

Following the court's decision on December 3, Louarn's website, MaxConsole, reported on the case saying that Nintendo had been accused of purposefully preventing people from developing for their consoles.

"The judge today has ruled against Nintendo and suggested that they are purposely locking out developers from their consoles and things should be more like Windows where anyone can develop any application if they wish to.

"The ramifications of this are huge, as it indicates that flash carts are actually legal. Moroever, it could have bigger implications for developers and the like because Nintendo is deemed to be 'illegally' protecting their system by locking users out. Therefore, developers should not actually require separate development kits and should just be able to develop applications as they wish on retail versions of Nintendo's consoles," reported the site.