NINTENDO CARTRIDGE IMPORTER ACQUITTED

The Audiencia Provincial de Oviedo has dismissed an appeal by Nintendo against business owner, Alejandro Fernández Gutiérrez, who runs a company called Alechip, for selling cartridges that can play downloaded games on the Nintendo DS handheld console.

The case dates back to 2009, when customs officers acted, at the request of Nintendo, to seize imported cartridges which the company claimed were being used to avoid purchasing games through the retail outlets and were being used to download illegally copied games via the internet.

Court number 1 acquitted Alejandro Fernández Gutiérrez in his first trial as the judge did not consider the explanation from Japanese company Nintendo proved the mechanism by which the console recognized a cartridge as "legal".

In addition, the judge ruled that a crime of intellectual property had not been committed as it was the console software that was protected in the case raised, not the contents of the cartridge. The court also ruled that the physical design of the cartridge was not an infringement of intellectual property rights in this case.

The Audiencia Provincial de Oviedo confirmed the acquittal in a statement, also declaring that there are insufficient legal grounds for a retrial.