Which is countries banned famiclones?
- Thread starter AhmetoFihhhters_1
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Continuing with this odd research are you.
Anyway I don't know that any have, and any that have been banned are more likely to be individually infringing items (say a clone that includes the BIOS or non free/licensed ROMs, maybe one that copies a registered design or colour scheme associated with a company, has not got the interference/electrical testing done on it for that region, or straight flouts trademark law) or have major restrictions on game consoles in general. Most game consoles are just an arrangement of off the shelf chips and those don't have much in the way of copyright protection, and even without that "for purposes of interoperability" is pretty persuasive in most courts.
It might get more fun these days with software patents in those places that have them (pretty much Japan and the US, everywhere else considering them antithetical to the whole idea of patents) but we saw unlicensed Chinese DVD players everywhere (the DVD consortium being bound up by software patents) after that was all cracked. Similarly if you can buy the chip then you are usually assumed to have the rights to go along with it so again we are back to individual implementations rather than whole categories. I wonder if we will get an amusing case in a few years when FPGAs become all the rage rather than buying in chips built to do the job.
I did a token search and the only thing I got back was from 2004 https://games.slashdot.org/story/04/11/02/1928240/nintendo-blocking-counterfeit-game-machines , sadly the source from that is gone and my token extra search for 2004 controller cases with Nintendo brought up some stuff from earlier in the year about patents and licensing rather than this.
The quote however was "prohibits retailers from selling products that look like Nintendo's game controllers from its older Nintendo 64 game console" for one of those plug it into the TV games so probably trademark or whatever local equivalent of design rights and registered designs, maybe a patent, rather than clones.
Nintendo has taken a slightly stronger stance on emulation over the years, which has led to some chilling effects ( https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023470/-It-s-Just-Emulation covers a few, and the workarounds employed for the megaman collection), but at the same time Pocketnes was allowed in commercial GBA games ( https://waxy.org/2004/07/jaleco_borrows/ ) so who knows.
Anyway I don't know that any have, and any that have been banned are more likely to be individually infringing items (say a clone that includes the BIOS or non free/licensed ROMs, maybe one that copies a registered design or colour scheme associated with a company, has not got the interference/electrical testing done on it for that region, or straight flouts trademark law) or have major restrictions on game consoles in general. Most game consoles are just an arrangement of off the shelf chips and those don't have much in the way of copyright protection, and even without that "for purposes of interoperability" is pretty persuasive in most courts.
It might get more fun these days with software patents in those places that have them (pretty much Japan and the US, everywhere else considering them antithetical to the whole idea of patents) but we saw unlicensed Chinese DVD players everywhere (the DVD consortium being bound up by software patents) after that was all cracked. Similarly if you can buy the chip then you are usually assumed to have the rights to go along with it so again we are back to individual implementations rather than whole categories. I wonder if we will get an amusing case in a few years when FPGAs become all the rage rather than buying in chips built to do the job.
I did a token search and the only thing I got back was from 2004 https://games.slashdot.org/story/04/11/02/1928240/nintendo-blocking-counterfeit-game-machines , sadly the source from that is gone and my token extra search for 2004 controller cases with Nintendo brought up some stuff from earlier in the year about patents and licensing rather than this.
The quote however was "prohibits retailers from selling products that look like Nintendo's game controllers from its older Nintendo 64 game console" for one of those plug it into the TV games so probably trademark or whatever local equivalent of design rights and registered designs, maybe a patent, rather than clones.
Nintendo has taken a slightly stronger stance on emulation over the years, which has led to some chilling effects ( https://www.gdcvault.com/play/1023470/-It-s-Just-Emulation covers a few, and the workarounds employed for the megaman collection), but at the same time Pocketnes was allowed in commercial GBA games ( https://waxy.org/2004/07/jaleco_borrows/ ) so who knows.
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