In a unanimous decision, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia yesterday overruled its previous verdict that video game console copy-protection schemes comprised a "technological protection measure" as defined in subs 10(1) of the Copyright Act. The result is to prevent the sale of so-called "mod chip" devices which circumvent said protection, and to draw uncertainty about the legality of similar software circumvention methods which are widespread in personal computing.

The grounds for appeal were two definitional disputes; in particular, what a device needs to protect in order to fall under the terms of the Act. The Court upheld Sony's argument that their Playstation 2 console inhibits infringement by rendering the resulting unauthorised copies unusable, though interestingly, decided that the circumvention chips manufactured by the defendant did not produce copies of software loaded onto the console.