Nintendo is continuing is ground pound on bootleggers, this time with a win in court against the R4 emulator cartridge.

A British high court decided against defendant Playables Limited and its owner, Wai Dat Chan, and determined that it is “illegal for the R4 card to circumvent Nintendo’s security systems in order to play content on the DS.” The finding makes R4 cards illegal to “import, advertise and sell anywhere in the UK”…

Nintendo’s ongoing crusade against the manufacturers of R4 cartridges and mod chips just got a big boost. This week a Hague District Court in the Netherlands found 11 online retailers guilty of selling game pirating equipment. A single R4 cart can hold many illegally obtained copies of Nintendo DS titles. Mod chips allow the Nintendo Wii to play copies of games and play games regardless of which region the system was purchased in…

Nintendo looked into NXPGAME and learned it was selling flash carts that allowed users to copy and distribute DS and DSi games. Nintendo threatened legal action against the owner until he agreed to close his site. To Nintendo’s surprise he created another site under a different name. He even redirected users from his old site to the new one without trying to hide it.

Piracy has always been a huge problem with handheld devices such as the Nintendo DS and Sony PSP. Even though the devices continue to sell millions of units every year, one could imagine how big of a hit software sales have suffered as the result of piracy. Nintendo is taking this problem very seriously. Speaking with Forbes, President Satoru Iwata inferred the 3DS will have secret ways to combat software piracy.

As further proof that the game industry is not playing around when it comes to piracy, United Kingdom resident Yun Can Meng has been sentenced to 12 months in prison.

Meng plead guilty to illegally importing R4 game copier cards. How many? Try 26,500 on for size. The cards allow the use of pirated content on the Nintendo DS.

This bust was a combined effort of…

A Flash cartridge that can be used to store pirated Nintendo DS games has publishers up in arms and a group of them are suing the companies that make the devices.

Nintendo, Capcom and 53 other publishers are taking legal action under Japan’s Unfair Competition Prevention Act, targeting four companies that make the R4 cartridges.

In February 2009, Tokyo District Court placed an injunction on the cart manufacturers making it illegal to sell R4s in Japan. But, as is often the case with legal issues, a court saying people can’t have something hasn’t stopped people from getting it.

The team behind the R4 slot one flashcarts think piracy is wrong. Well, at least when it effects them. They’ve had enough with knock-off R4 flashcarts, and have decided that, after September 15, 2008, they will change the programing in the R4 kernels so they will only work on official R4 carts.

Let’s say you already own a fake R4 cartridge. Well, you better not update the firmware for it after September 15. The new update will not only not work with the fake card, it will also turn your DS into a very expensive brick. R4′s development team has issued a firm statement that owners of the fake carts who ignore their warnings and render their DS units useless will have to complain to the shop they purchased the fake cart from.