UK Appeals Court Overturns Mr. Mod Chips Conviction
Posted in Crime, Intellectual Property, News
A UK Appeals Court overturned the conviction of Neil Higgs, also known as Mr. Mod Chips, on Wednesday. Higgs was initially found guilty of selling thousands of mod chips — devices that allow users to play imported and pirated games on their video game consoles — via his website. An early police raid turned up 3,700 mod chips, imported from Hong Kong, in the home of Higgs’s parents. The lower court held that these devices were illegal, as they allowed users to circumvent copyright protection.
However, Techdirt now reports that the Higgs conviction has been overturned. The UK Appeals Court held that any alleged copyright infringement has already taken place before the use of a mod chip and awarded full costs to Higgs as a result of his successful appeal.
The UK now joins Australia as one of a few countries to legalize the distribution of mod chips. Countries such as Italy and the United States — under the DMCA — continue to hold that mod chips are illegal tools designed to circumvent copyright protections.
One Response to “UK Appeals Court Overturns Mr. Mod Chips Conviction”
By GusTavToo on Jun 27, 2008
I’m afraid that after the full judgment in R v Higgs was handed down on the 25th June it is pretty clear that the UK has not legalised modchips. The conviction was overturned by the Court of Appeal as the argument which the prosecution ran at the original trial was flawed. They argued that the fitting of modchips encouraged piracy by facilitating a trade in infringing material. The CoA found that to be too tenuous a link between the copyright infringement and the circumvention device.
They did, however, suggest that if the prosecution had argued that the modchip allowed an infringing copy to be made in RAM through the fitting of a modchip they would have dismissed the appeal and allowed the conviction to stand. I therefore appears that it is now clear what a prosecution will have to prove in order to make a successful case against a modchip supplier. They are certainly not lawful.