Atari's False Lawsuit Claim Backfires

In 1988, Atari Games' legal team falsely told the U.S. Copyright Office that it needed Nintendo's 10NES anti-piracy source code for litigation, even though no case was pending. Atari used the code to create Rabbit, a system that allowed unauthorized game cartridges to bypass the Nintendo Entertainment System's lockout. After Atari sued Nintendo in December 1988, Nintendo countersued and won an injunction against Atari's unauthorized games. A federal appeals court upheld that ruling in 1992, rejecting Atari's fair-use defense because it had obtained the code under false pretenses.

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