Since 2012, Sony has been in legal battle in the European Union with Datel, the parent company behind the Action Replay cheat software. Sony argued in the European court that Datel infringed upon its copyright, but now the battle is over and the court has come down in Datel’s favor.
The European Court of Justice has ruled that Datel’s cheating software didn’t change the source code or the internal structure of Sony’s games. Because Action Replay only temporarily changes the content for cheats, it doesn’t violate the intellectual property of Sony that is protected under European law. It’s a victory for Datel, but it may not open the floodgates for more cheating software.
“No doubt developers and publishers of cheat software will rejoice. [But] they should not be too enthusiastic about this judgement,” said Dr. Andreas Lober–a partner in the international law firm ADVANT Beiten–during a discussion with GamesIndustry.biz. “For procedural reasons, the Court only ruled on one single ground: whether merely changing variables of a computer program qualified as an unauthorized modification. When publishers of multiplayer games act against providers of cheat software today, they typically rely on other legal instruments which are not affected by this decision, e.g. breach of EULAs and unfair competition.”
Lober went on to explain that third-party software created for cheats or mods may still be considered acts of copyright infringement on other legal grounds. Any company that intends to make a business out of marketing that software will likely run into more lawsuits from Sony or another game publishers. And just because Sony lost this round, it still has plenty of legal options to explore against any would-be infringements from other companies.