Intellectual Property Law

Decrease in Piracy for PSP Software

By Chris Bennett, Tudor Carsten, Michael R. Coburn, Sarah Dale-Harris, Pablo Guzman, Danielle (Dani) Lemon, Chris Metcalfe and David Spratley

Sony Computer Entertainment America's head of hardware marketing, John Koller, has said that although piracy remains a problem for the PlayStation Portable (PSP), it has trended down in recent months. Although it has been reported that sales for the PSP hardware have been doing reasonably well, it has not been the case for the PSP software. Sony has claimed that PSP games rarely make it to into The NPD Group's monthly top 10 software charts because of piracy issues. It is also possible that consumers are interested in the PSP hardware for its other multimedia functionality.

Direct downloads from the PlayStation Store, which have recently been introduced, may also contribute to decreasing piracy. While Koller has noted that Sony has been monitoring video game message boards, he has stated the following: ??oeThere's certainly people that are standing up and fighting for what we consider the good side, the rights of developers and publishers to make money on their IP. And then there's certainly the other side that believes that they can take as warranted. Its kind of been nice to see other consumers going and help and fight the battle for us'.

Coverage at GameDaily.com

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Full post as published by Video Game Law Blog on December 04, 2008 (boomark / email).