[tombert]

I think it's pretty clear that if they felt that they had a case against emulation as a whole, they would have brought down the Dolphin project. As it stands, the worst they've done is gotten it booted off Steam, but I can happily still download it from their website. The Dolphin project has been around in some capacity since 2003, while the GameCube was still relevant, and had more-or-less decent Wii Emulation in 2009 as well; by all accounts in 2010 Dolphin was directly competing with "real" Wiis (while offering proper HD output no less).

I'm sure Nintendo's lawyers were perfectly aware of Dolphin pretty early on, and if they felt that there was any case against them then they would have done something.