Cheating Software: Sony Loses Against Datel at European Court
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Under German law, Sony had sued the cheating software provider Datel for damages. The Bundesgerichtshof had enquired at the European Court, now both courts have decided: The software isn't illegal because it doesn't change Sony's operating system, it merely runs along games.
In a court case that the German Bundesgerichtshof (BGH) relayed to the European Court as a pre-decision enquiry last year, Sony Interactive Entertainment had tried to sue the company Datel on the base of a cheat software for PlayStation consoles. Datel, who had settled a similar case with Microsoft in 2012 (article in German), offers the software in question, a PlayStation Portable programme that enables cheat codes in selected games. “Sony is of the opinion that the software on which its game is based has been modified using these Datel products, thereby infringing its exclusive right to authorise such modifications. It therefore applied to the German courts to prohibit Datel from distributing the products in question and to order Datel to pay compensation for the damage it claims to have suffered,” the court document explains the case of the console provider.
The BGH had assumed that the software was legal because “it does not modify or reproduce the object or source code or the internal structure and organisation of Sony's software”. The European Court follows this assumption.
“The Court considers that the protection specifically granted by the directive (the law on which Sony sued, editor’s note) does not cover the content of variable data which a computer program has stored in the memory of a computer and uses in the running of the program, in so far as that content does not enable the reproduction or subsequent creation of such a program.”
The European Court therefore goes along with the of the BGH, which means that the case is now to be closed under German law.
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