While piracy of actual discs have gone down severely in Singapore over the past few years (mainly due to Sony and MS cracking down pretty seriously), the sale of pirated Nintendo carts and other possibly unlicensed goods have continued. Today it seems Nintendo has finally kicked some serious ass. Seow Choon is a big dealer in videogames, consoles and accessories here locally (they do import/export and distribution to smaller stores as well I believe) and today on page 7 of the local papers, I see this:
APOLOGY
We, Seow Choon Games Specialist Pte Ltd, unreservedly apologise to the Entertainment Software Association ("ESA") and Nintendo Co Ltd and Nintendo of America Inc ("Nintendo") for having infringed the Nintendo's trade mark and other relevant intellectual property rights in Nintendo's products. We acknowledge the harm caused by our activities in selling products without Nintendo's explicit authorisation and regret this deeply. We understand that intellectual property rights are protected in Singapore and that compliance with such laws is important.
We undertake not to further infringe Nintendo's intellectual property rights nor those of any other member of ESA. We understand any further infringing activity on our part will subject us to criminal prosecution and penalties.
The ESA is a non-profit organisation representing video and computer games software publishers including Nintendo. For further information relating to the ESA, please refer to the ESA's web site at www.theesa.com or its solicitors Messers Alban Tay Mahtani & De Silva at 39 Robinson Road, #07-01 Robinson Point, Singapore 068911.
I don't clearly know what Seow Choon did, but this is some serious ownage. They could have been selling pirate carts under the table (they don't display them at least) or it might have to do with unlicensed pheripherals or flash carts or even dumb N64-clone NES units. But at least something got done about it.
APOLOGY
We, Seow Choon Games Specialist Pte Ltd, unreservedly apologise to the Entertainment Software Association ("ESA") and Nintendo Co Ltd and Nintendo of America Inc ("Nintendo") for having infringed the Nintendo's trade mark and other relevant intellectual property rights in Nintendo's products. We acknowledge the harm caused by our activities in selling products without Nintendo's explicit authorisation and regret this deeply. We understand that intellectual property rights are protected in Singapore and that compliance with such laws is important.
We undertake not to further infringe Nintendo's intellectual property rights nor those of any other member of ESA. We understand any further infringing activity on our part will subject us to criminal prosecution and penalties.
The ESA is a non-profit organisation representing video and computer games software publishers including Nintendo. For further information relating to the ESA, please refer to the ESA's web site at www.theesa.com or its solicitors Messers Alban Tay Mahtani & De Silva at 39 Robinson Road, #07-01 Robinson Point, Singapore 068911.
I don't clearly know what Seow Choon did, but this is some serious ownage. They could have been selling pirate carts under the table (they don't display them at least) or it might have to do with unlicensed pheripherals or flash carts or even dumb N64-clone NES units. But at least something got done about it.
