Nintendo challenging price-fixing fine

Sometimes the wheels of justice turn slowly. Earlier this week, Nintendo representatives appeared before the European Court of First Instance to argue for an appeal originally filed in 2003 on a fine levied the year before.

In 2002, the European Commission levied a €149 million (roughly $147 million at the time, now equivalent to more than $233 million) fine against Nintendo as punishment for price fixing. The publisher was fined for colluding with seven European distributors to artificially inflate prices in the region by preventing export sales to higher-cost areas from countries where games were cheaper.

Nintendo appealed the ruling early the next year, calling the fine "manifestly exorbitant" and saying that the amount had been unlawfully and inappropriately calculated. Specifically, Nintendo believes that the commission did not give sufficient reason for tripling the amount of the fine for the purposes of deterring future offenses. It also said that a 10 percent increase for each year during which the company broke the law was inappropriate because "the infringement was not of a continuous intensity."

According to a Bloomberg report, a Nintendo lawyer told the court "The penalty was unfair, illegal, even shocking... This remains one of the biggest single fines in EU competition law."

Unswayed, European Commission lawyer Xavier Lewis said, "The fine was not of a capricious nature, or based on wild estimates... This fine was for an infringement that was considered very serious."