A Paris court ruled that it was illegal for Nintendo to lock out third party flash cartridges for the DS.
Nintendo filed a civil suit in France against the Divineo Group for manufacturing flash cartridges to work with its DS platform. According to a report from MaxConsole, the suit reached the highest court in Paris before a judge ruled that Nintendo had no right to restrict other manufacturer’s flash cartridges from operating on their systems. The judge further suggested that Nintendo gaming systems should “work more like Windows” and allow other developers to make software available however they desire.
This last statement is especially ironic because of Microsoft’s recent actions rendering third party flash memory cards to be ineffective on the Xbox 360.
One would wonder whether the decision of a French court will have any ramifications for gamers worldwide but it is the next step in an ongoing debate: Do console makers own the rights to how software is made to work with their invention?
