I bought my SH3 in Germany via Amazon.de (did not know about subsim.com), it was already patched and it don't need any NoCD. And no serial number either.
Simply install and it runs without the DVD.
Probably ubisoft has changed it ... maybe because it's a game from 2005 and I bought it in 2009?
Also quite strange ... I can make a copy from the original SH3 to a DVD-RW (or DVD-R) and it works the same as the original!
In that case, I always have a backup.