London High Court ruling makes R4 cartridges illegal in the UK

London's High Court has made devices such as the R4 cartridge illegal in the UK.

The ruling was made against Wai Dat Chan and Playable Ltd, which sold electronic devices to UK'ers which means advertising, importing and selling DS copying devices are now against British law effective immediately.

Playable argued the devices allowed users to play homebrew software on DS, but the court felt Nintendo's "security systems must be circumvented before any software can be played" on the handheld, reported GI.biz.

According to Nintendo's figures, over 100K copying devices had been confiscated in the UK since 2009, and the company claimed earlier this year the 50 percent drop in European DS software sales was due to piracy.

A study conducted by Nintendo found DS software had been pirated 238 million times, due to companies "based overseas".

Once the law has been in effect for some time, DS sales numbers may go up. We'll have to wait and see.