Figures from the patent filing, plainly showing its 3DS-edness

When you make things nowadays, especially in the realm of technology, odds are increasingly good that you will run into someone claiming patent infringement on your creation. Sometimes the plaintiff is in the right; other times they're just money-hungry patent trolls. Either way, you better be ready to defend yourself, and Nintendo has successfully done so once again.

According to a release from Nintendo, the company won a patent case this past 17 July in United States federal court against California-based Quintal Research Group, Inc. The group had filed a complaint in February 2013 arguing that many of Nintendo's hand-held systems, including the 3DS, Nintendo DS, and Game Boy Advance infringed upon Quintal's owned patent for a "Computerized Information Retrieval System," described in the filing as such:

A portable, handheld communication device for rapid retrieval of computerized information, the device having a generally rectangular shape with a display screen on one side that has a frame with an ergonomic placement of finger controls including a pair of thumb controls on either side of the screen and a pair of finger controls on the top of the display with at least one of the finger controls being a cursor or pointer control.

Judge Saundra Brown Armstrong found that Nintendo's devices did not infringe upon the patent for a box covered in finger and thumb controls, summarily dismissing the case. You can download a copy of the case filing for a self-lesson in the workings of the United States legal patents system, as well as to see more of the strangely neat-o patent illustrations we have sampled here.