Although no legal action has taken place as of yet, Nintendo UK's PR manager Robert Saunders said "We take rigorous steps to protect our IP and our legal team will examine this to determine if any infringement has taken place."
Nokia has since pulled the video from their site. The N900 phone launched in the US on November 18, 2009.
Keep in mind that the games mentioned are still being sold on the VC, so they are not obsolete!
And while it may be difficult to prove they dumped the games, it's still a clear case of promoting piracy, although legally I don't know what that amounts to.
On June 27, 2005, in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, Ltd., the United States Supreme Court held that software companies may be held liable for copyright infringement if there is evidence showing an intent to encourage infringement through use of their software by third parties.
Nokia isn't doing anything wrong. According to the DMCA, emulating, and obtaining ROM images of games that are obsolete/no longer produced is *not* illegal. I'm sure the ROMs are not included on the phone, and Nokia won't host them on a web site, but they've done nothing wrong. The only basis Nintendo has is Nokia is advertising Nintendo's IPs.
The DMCA does not apply to all countries. The article mentions this is in the UK. Why would an American law be in effect there?Of course it applies there. It's American law.