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Legal proceedings: <div classp style="mwtext-collapsible-contentalign: center;">Nintendo sued Legal proceedings on Tengen for these actions. The court found that Tengen did not violate the copyright for copying the portion of code necessary to defeat the protection with current NES consoles, but did violate the copyright for copying portions of the code not being used in the communication between the chip and console. Tengen claimed it had copied this code in its entirety because future console releases could have been engineered to pick up the discrepancy. On the initial claim, the court sided with Nintendo on the issue of patent infringement, but noted that Nintendo’s patent would likely be deemed obvious as it was basically U.S. Patent 4,736,419 with the addition of a reset pin, which was at the time already commonplace in the world of electronics. Therefore, while Nintendo was the winner of the initial trial, before they could actually enforce the ruling they would need to have the patent hold up under scrutiny, as well as address Tengen’s antitrust claims. Before this occurred, the sides settled.</div>:</divp>
Added link to NES page at bottom.
NES consoles sold in different regions had different lockout chips, so games marketed in one region would not work on consoles from another region. Known regions are: USA/Canada (3193 lockout chip), most of Europe (3195), Asia (3196) and UK, Italy and Australia (3197). Since two types of lockout chip were used in Europe, European NES game boxes often had an "A" or "B" letter on the front, indicating whether the game is compatible with UK/Italian/Australian consoles (A), or the rest of Europe (B). Rest-of-Europe games typically had text on the box stating "This game is not compatible with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System". Similarly, UK/Italy/Australia games stated "This game is only compatible with the Mattel or NES versions of the Nintendo Entertainment System".
==Bypass==
Because the 10NES in the model NES-001 Control Deck occasionally fails to authenticate legal cartridges, a common modification is to disable tinkerers at home discovered that disassembling the chip entirely by NES and cutting the fourth pin 4 on of the Control Deck's internal 10NES lockout chipwould change the chip’s mode of operation from "lock" to "key", removing all effects and greatly improving the console’s ability to play legal games, as well as bootlegs and converted imports.
*Most unlicensed companies created circuits that used a voltage spike to knock the authentication unit in the NES offline.
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<div class="mw-collapsible-content">''Nintendo sued Tengen for these actions. The court found that Tengen did not violate the copyright for copying the portion of code necessary to defeat the protection with current NES consoles, but did violate the copyright for copying portions of the code not being used in the communication between the chip and console. Tengen claimed it had copied this code in its entirety because future console releases could have been engineered to pick up the discrepancy. On the initial claim, the court sided with Nintendo on the issue of patent infringement, but noted that Nintendo’s patent would likely be deemed obvious as it was basically U.S. Patent 4,736,419 with the addition of a reset pin, which was at the time already commonplace in the world of electronics. Therefore, while Nintendo was the winner of the initial trial, before they could actually enforce the ruling they would need to have the patent hold up under scrutiny, as well as address Tengen’s antitrust claims. Before this occurred, the sides settled.''</div>
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*A small company called RetroZone, the first company to publish games on the NES in over a decade, uses a multi-region lockout chip for NTSC, PAL A, and PAL B called the Ciclone which was created by reverse engineering Tengen's "Rabbit" chip. It is the only lockout chip in existence that will allow games to be played in more than one region. It is intended to make the games playable on the original NES-001 hardware that uses the 10NES lockout chip and the two other regions - the other region free alternative would be the top-loading NES, which does not feature the lockout chip. The Ciclone chip is the first lockout chip to be developed after the patent for the 10NES had expired. ==See Also==*[[Nintendo Entertainment System]] [[Category:Chip]]
