13 comments

  • echoangle 2 days ago

    This suit is about a PSP game and started 12 years ago. I wonder what Datel had to pay over all this time to defend themselves.

    • ChocolateGod 2 days ago

      I believe since Sony lost, they would need to pay back the defendants legal fees.

      • d1sxeyes 2 days ago

        Sony haven’t lost the original lawsuit, the question was referred to a higher court, but from what I understand, the appeal court in Germany still holds jurisdiction over the case.

        Either way, it’s not a given that legal fees would be awarded. This can also have a chilling effect, and so is not as good for the legal system as it sounds. If I have a decent case against a big company, and they spend millions on defence and get off on an esoteric point of law, I shouldn’t need to pay their multi-million dollar legal bill. Otherwise a company can just spend huge amounts on legal costs as a way to encourage unfavourable settlements (“hey, our legal bill is up to 12 million already, we know you think you’re entitled to 5 million but we’ll give you 50k to settle today. It’d be a shame if we made it to court and you lost and had to pay our lawyers…”)

        • 2 days ago
          [deleted]
      • echoangle 2 days ago

        Probably, but you still have to put up the money for 12 years first.

    • drtgh 2 days ago

      I do not know such field, but it seems they sell videogame cheat products, maybe more than to defend they have been investing in to grant more freedom to parasitize with their exploits.

  • benchloftbrunch a day ago

    This has been settled case law in the US since the 90s, see Galoob v Nintendo. (Although that was subtly different since the Game Genie worked by intercepting ROM accesses, instead of rewriting values in RAM like this one does.)

    • Manuel_D a day ago

      Has it? My understanding is that altering game executables, even during runtime after it's been loaded in RAM, can fall afoul of the DMCA. Heck, even emulator developer have been successfully sued as per Yuzu.

      • 3np a day ago

        > successfully sued as per Yuzu.

        "Successfully" as in the devs folded before it went even close to court.

        Of course the use and development of the emulator continue under new names by new people - just not on GitHub or GitLab...

  • dustypotato 2 days ago

    [flagged]

    • kryptiskt 2 days ago

      I don't get the point of that comment, this ruling allows more freedom to innovate by restricting the scope of copyright. Similarly, many of the EU's regulations is about breaking down the barriers to competition that these tech giants put up, which again helps innovation.

    • rightbyte 2 days ago

      It is about a cheat mod not being copyright infringement.

      "Software sold by UK company Datel that allowed infinite boosts on a racing game doesn’t infringe EU copyright law, judges in Luxembourg said"

      But anyway. The tech ecosystem would be way better off without Microsoft, Facebook, Oracle, Google etc.

      These mega corps do more harm then good, buying up competition. It is probibly applicable to Apple, Nvidia, Intel too.

    • BlueTemplar 2 days ago

      It would, and a much more robust one, consider the case of China.