I don’t know enough about EU law, but it appears that they have some sort of provision against parallel trade of games. Anyway, a HK company has been banned from selling its Japanese games to anyone in the EU. Don’t know whether this includes games that aren’t available in Europe (what if you’re Japanese and you want to play games in your mother tongue?) but this story doesn’t give any hints to exceptions. Unfortunately, this is just another example of governments enforcing anti-competitive corporate policies. It’s just incredible how intellectual property owners wield so much power. If something threatens your business model these days, you aren’t made to reevaluate it and innovate, the government just throws you a law to make your competition illegal. Brilliant!
Japanese electronics maker Sony has won a legal battle in the UK to stop a Hong Kong company from selling PlayStation computer games manufactured for sale in Japan to European consumers through its website. Pacific Game Technology, which did not appear at the High Court hearing, operates a website, selling video games, consoles and accessories. Sony told the High Court that the website was in English, quoted prices in sterling and included testimonials from UK-based purchasers. One test purchase, shown to the Court, was marked “only for sale and use in Japan”. His Honour Judge Fysh, in a ruling handed down on October 18, said the infringing acts had been perpetrated in the European Economic Area (EEA), and not in Hong Kong. “It would make no sense if intellectual property rights in the EEA could be avoided merely by setting up a website outside the EEA crafted to sell within it. Were the acts of which complaint is made to have been committed physically within the EEA they would unarguably have been infringing acts. I cannot see how the electronic intermediary of a website which focussed at least in part on the EEA would make them any less so.” The injunction covers the whole of the EU.