Liberty Times eNewsletter July 8, 2025
[Reporter Huang Jia-lin/Kaohsiung report] The popular online game console “Moonlight Treasure Box” has more than 20,000 games and is deeply loved by players. A man named Li and five other sellers sold “Moonlight Treasure Box” on the Shopee website. They were sued for infringement by the Japanese company Nintendo. The Criminal Investigation Bureau’s Intellectual Property Investigation Team, i.e., the 3rd Investigation Team launched an investigation and arrested Li and others one after another in New Taipei City, Taoyuan and other places. It is estimated that they sold more than 5 million sets of pirated game software and the infringing market value exceeded 4 billion NTD. After the interrogation, Li and the others were respectively transferred to the District Prosecutors’ Offices of New Taipei City, Taoyuan City, Hsinchu City, and Kaohsiung City for investigation for violation of the Copyright Act.
The 3rd Investigation Team pointed out that the Japanese company Nintendo reported to the police that some illegal operators used online shopping platforms to sell large quantities of “Moonlight Treasure Box” game consoles with unauthorized game software, making huge profits and seriously infringing intellectual property rights. The police immediately set up a special task force to investigate and found that several operators were suspected of importing large quantities of pirated game consoles from oversees and selling them for profit.
At the end of last year, the team launched the first wave of search operations in New Taipei City, Taoyuan City, and Hsinchu City, arresting sellers named Li (42 years old), Kuang (25 years old), and Lin (53 years old), and confiscated 3 host computers , 23 hard drives, 78 pirated game consoles and other evidence on the spot; in February and May of this year , sellers named Chen ( 39 years old) and Tsai ( 32 years old) were arrested in Hsinchu and Kaohsiung. Among them, the seller named Tsai had the best business. Tsai first ordered top-grade pirated game console (PRO version) spare parts from illegal Chinese businesses and imported them to Taiwan. Tsai assembled customized pirated game consoles according to customer requirements and then sold them. A total of 91 pirated game consoles and 114 game console motherboards were found in his assembly factory.
The police said that due to the large number of infringements involved in this raid, after identification of evidence seized by the right owners, it was estimated that there were more than 5 million sets of pirated game software, all of which were unauthorized game files. The initial estimated market value of the infringements was more than 4 billion NTD. The case was transferred to the District Prosecutors’ Offices of New Taipei City, Taoyuan City, Hsinchu City, and Kaohsiung City for investigation on suspicion of violating the Copyright Act and the Trademark Act.
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