Court rules in Nintendo's favour in anti-piracy case

Nintendo has successfully smacked down yet another source of piracy-enabling hardware.

The First Instance Tribunal of Milan has ruled that an Italian importer of circumvention devices has indeed enabled piracy by distributing the means of copying games and running copied games on Nintendo's hardware.

IGN reports the Tribunal agreed with Nintendo's claim that the devices in question were primarily designed to enable the use of pirated software, and that Nintendo's current software and hardware security measures are justified under local copyright law.

"Nintendo is pleased that this ruling is consistent with a long line of judicial precedents established at national courts in a number of Member States including Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain and the UK," Nintendo said in a statement.

"This decision is also entirely in line with several decisions from the Italian Supreme Court (Criminal Division) against sellers of circumvention devices as well as a recent ruling from the criminal appeal courts in Florence, which confirmed a first instance criminal decision, against the owners of PC Box."