$944K fine dished out in ongoing Nintendo DS piracy battle

Nintendo, Square Enix and a number of other Japanese companies won a long-standing legal battle against two distributors of R4 devices, Nintendo announced today in a report on its website.

Today, a Tokyo court ruled that two R4 sellers in Tokyo must pay a total of 95,625,000 yen ($944,966.25 USD) in damages to Nintendo and about fifty other companies involved in the suit. These companies include Konami, Capcom, Level-5 and Bandai Namco.

Nintendo’s post includes a statement that it will continue to crackdown on flashcart sellers in the future.

Last year, the Japanese government imposed a ban on the importing of R4 devices, which can be used to store emulators and other pirated software. These devices, called flashcards or flashcarts, are popularly used with the Nintendo DS and 3DS. The ban was prompted by complaints from Nintendo, the company stating use of these flashcards was “infringing [Nintendo’s] intellectual property rights” by allowing mass piracy of its handheld games.