Lik Sang sells Flash Linkers in addition to other games-related
products. The company has been around since 1998. But Flash Linkers
are controversial.
For those who use cartridge-based consoles, like Nintendo's Game
Boy Advance, a Flash linker allows the user to back-up a cartridge
to a computer - which is helpful if it is lost or damaged. But it
is more commonly used for piracy. Flash linkers can also be used to
copy games from a PC to blank Flash RAM cartridges for playing on a
Game Boy Advance. Again, while this facilitates amateur games
development, it also encourages piracy.
In practice, the technology that Lik Sang sold was being used to
make Nintendo games available as free downloads from peer-to-peer
networks like KaZaA. In 2002, Nintendo claims that, together with
its publishers and developers, it suffered nearly $650 million in
lost sales as a result of the illegal copying of Nintendo
products.
The decision follows a lawsuit filed by Nintendo against Lik
Sang last year. Nintendo was granted a seizure order on 17th
September, 2002 by the High Court of Hong Kong. The court then gave
Nintendo authority to confiscate all offending products and related
business documentation that could lead to further lawsuits against
offending manufacturers and distributors.
Nintendo obtained an injunction order against the worldwide
assets of Lik Sang including a seizure of its bank accounts.
Following the raid, Lik Sang International Limited ceased
distribution of the products.
Nintendo announced yesterday that Judge William Waung in Hong
Kong's High Court has ordered that an interim payment of HK$5
million (US$641,000) be made to Nintendo in addition to legal
expenses. The final award of damages will be decided at a later
hearing.
The basis of the court's ruling is a local copyright law
preventing people from selling video game copying devices used to
make illegal games.
Hong Kong copyright law is directed not at the person who made
unlawful copy but the person who furnished the means to make the
illegal copying occur. By analogy, "With drugs, it is not aimed at
the drug addict but at the drug trafficker," noted Judge Waung. "I
have no doubt that the reason they sell like hotcakes is because
they delivered the means whereby a person would be able to steal
the games of [Nintendo] housed inside the Game Boy cartridge of
[Nintendo's] and then illegally put the stolen games into [Lik
Sang's] Flash Card."
Lik Sang International Limited has yet to comment.
