Computers and information technology Sony loses before the ECJ in dispute over cheat software

In the dispute over cheating software for games consoles, Playstation manufacturer Sony has conceded defeat before Europe's highest court. The judges of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg thus follow German courts.

The ECJ ruled that so-called cheat software does not fundamentally infringe copyright law as long as it only temporarily modifies data in the memory of a console.

The background to this is a legal dispute that has been ongoing in German courts for years. The specific case involves a racing game for a mobile games console (Playstation Portable) that is no longer in production.

Thanks to the additional functions provided by cheat software, players were able, for example, to use the "turbo" without restriction or select drivers from the outset that were only supposed to be available from a higher score. The Playstation manufacturer Sony therefore demanded compensation from the developers and sellers of the cheat software for copyright infringement.

One of the legal issues was whether the game had been "modified" - which would be prohibited under copyright law. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court dismissed the Sony lawsuit, while the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) referred the case to the ECJ. The judges in Luxembourg largely followed the German courts and have now put a spoke in Sony's wheel: as long as the modified data is not intended to copy the program, copyright law is not infringed here.

The BGH must now decide on the specific case and take into account the legal opinion of the ECJ.