ECJ-355/12
The European Court of Justice had to decide a case in which a company sold software to bypass the protection mechanism in Nintendo game consoles. That mechanism allows only legal versions of Nintendo games to be played on the consoles. The Court found that only those prevention mechanisms are protected by law which intend to stop use of illegal copies of works protected by copyright. Mechanisms intending to prevent play of third party, e.g. competitor's games, are not protected by law. Consequently the software sold to bypass Nintendo's prevention mechanism was in so far not illegal. It was the task of the national court before which the case is tried to determine whether Nintendo could use a mechanism that would only prevent playing of illegal copies. If that was technically possible then the bypassing software of the defendant was not illegal.
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