European Court of Justice rules against Sony in PSP cheating lawsuit

Sony has lost a more than decade-old lawsuit against UK peripheral firm Datel, with The European Court of Justice ruling in favor of the Action Replay manufacturer.

The lawsuit dates all the way back to 2012, when Sony filed a lawsuit against Datel in German courts over the use of its Action Replay cheating device for PSP, claiming that the product was infringing on its lone rights to alter previously-released game software.

A press release from The European Court of Justice explains the ruling, with the German Federal Court of Justice finding Action Replay lawful, on the grounds that it "does not change or reproduce either the object code, the source code, or the internal structure and organization of Sony's software."

Cheat and modding software has come along way since the days of the PSP, with multiplayer hacking software now more widely used than physical devices like Action Replay. No matter the form, this tech frequently catches the ire of the game makers and platform holders, with Activision and Bungie both recently winning multi-million dollar lawsuits against creators of third party hacking software.