Nintendo continues seek & destroy mission on DS game copiers, sues Web retailer

Video game company Nintendo today said it filed a civil lawsuit against New York-based website owner NXPGAME for selling game copiers that let users download and play ROMS of Nintendo DS and DSi games.

Nintendo says NXPGAME agreed to stop selling the game copier on its sites, but simply moved operations to a different URL.

"Using game copiers to play unauthorized downloaded games is illegal and it's wrong," said Jodi Daugherty, Nintendo of America's senior director of Anti-Piracy.

This lawsuit follows the 2009 Nintendo v. Chan case, where Nintendo successfully argued that game copiers violate the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and are therefore illegal in the United States. That case forced three electronics retail sites to remove the R4 DS mod cartridge from their inventories.

In February of this year, Nintendo won a similar case in Australian federal court to have the $45 R4 DS removed from Web retailers there.

Nintendo has been fighting to have the R4 removed from markets since 2007, and launched a worldwide initiative to work with governments where piracy is a problem, such as China, Korea, Brazil, and Mexico.