The Court of Justice of the European Union has handed a historic victory to Datel, the company behind video game cheat device Action Replay. For w

Sony Loses as CJEU Rules Datel’s RAM Data ‘Cheat’ Non-Copyright Infringing

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2024-10-19 06:30:03

The Court of Justice of the European Union has handed a historic victory to Datel, the company behind video game cheat device Action Replay. For well over a decade, Sony argued that modification of game generated code amounted to copyright infringement. The CJEU judgment holds that there was no violation of Sony's rights, since Action Replay ran alongside Sony's game code, only modifying values in RAM while leaving object code untouched.

The legal battle in Germany between Sony Entertainment Interactive and cheat cartridge seller Datel has been ongoing for well over a decade.

Sony had hoped to end sales of Datel’s Action Replay PSP and Tilt FX. These products enabled users of Sony’s PSP console to modify gameplay by tweaking code, thereby obtaining extra ‘lives’ and similar ‘cheat’ features.

According to Sony, Datel’s software intervened in the ‘program flow’ of its games and, by changing the flow, Sony’s copyrighted game code was modified. Therefore, the software creating an unauthorized derivative work.