If you've visited the site over the past couple of days, you probably noticed the story that a federal court in Dallas ruled a patent asserted against Nintendo’s Wii Remote as invalid. The court said that iLife Technologies Inc. was "impermissibly trying to cover the broad concept of using motion sensors to detect motion", nullifying a $10.1 million jury award against Nintendo in the process. It's an interesting story, and one which has caused a fair bit of debate amongst fans.
Following up on this, law firm and gaming IP specialist Dorsey & Whitney has shared a statement with us from Ryan Meyer, an intellectual property attorney at the company. He notes that this recent case is "a warning to patentees... that overly broad claims are more likely to be found to be patent ineligible". We've shared some of his comments below.
"The iLife ruling provides another example of the patent ineligibility of using conventional hardware to implement a conventional, abstract idea.
"The iLife decision is a warning to patentees, particularly with respect to computer hardware-implemented inventions, that overly broad claims are more likely to be found to be patent ineligible. As a precaution, patentees should identify the most inventive features of their invention and draft at least some claims directed specifically to those features.
"Had iLife been more mindful of the inventive aspects of its technology when drafting its claims, this case might have ended much differently. As the Court noted, iLife’s patent arguably discloses a preferred embodiment with inventive features, but iLife’s asserted claim was found to be invalid because it fails to include any of those features.
"iLife is procedurally interesting because, although Nintendo teed up the patent ineligibility issue in a motion for summary judgment, the Court waited to decide the issue as a post-trial judgment as a matter of law, without presenting it to the jury. The Court’s decision was partly based on expert and inventor trial testimony which emphasizes how evidence presented to the jury can affect even non-jury issues."
In response to the legal win, Nintendo said that it would "continue to vigorously defend [its] products", accusing iLife of "seeking to profit off of technology they did not invent".
Comments 23
Don't mess with Nintendo lawyers.
The winner (Nintendo) takes it all.
The loser has to fall.
iLife are scum.
Patents were never intended to be about concepts. They were always meant to be specific to an inventions specific implementation.
If two companies came up with a kitty litter scooping device, but one was a glove and the other a plastic shovel with holes, neither should be able to sue the other over a “kitty litter scooping device” patent. Similarly, a motion capture device using lasers should not infringe a patent about one using gyroscopes or a web of cameras, etc.
If I’m not wrong, a patent was meant to be specific enough that, post expiration, anyone could just read the patent and implement the invention without having to come up with an implementation. However, since reviewers are usually more common individuals, they end up receiving vague inventions filled with jargon and just end up approving them. Then it comes up to courts to weed those out as they get abused in court, but even that weeding out often fails.
Glad this time the patent got thrown out, but I’m not as optimistic of the future.
Frankly I think Nintendo is right, iLife was trying to make money off of tech they did not invent. And you can bet that if Nintendo were some small indie company with very little cash, they wouldn't have even bothered with the lawsuit. They were just looking for money without the effort.
All comes down to Patent Trolls whom did nothing to innovate the product.
@BarefootBowser even worse is that in many cases the determination of validity is either done by the same people that approved it to begin with, or by a jury of people that just try to figure out what lawyers closing arguments were more convincing.
If I understood it correctly, if iLife had been more specific about the patent and said, this will be used for video games, specifically xyz then they might have a chance. Patenting motion controls is just too broad. Of course they didn't and were just trying to patent the obvious.
Patent trolling is bad; Nintendo better not try to sue Alienware.
Patently Stupid
Sounds like a procedural anomaly gave this story much more traction / legs that it deserved. Basically what the lawyer here is saying is that the case should have been over before any kind of trial proceedings even occurred. Without over-complicating things, Summary Judgment is a pre-trial motion that basically blows out a significant number of erroneous claims in all sorts of civil proceedings. For whatever reason, the judge here punted on the pre-trial motion and deferred ruling on the issue until after hearing from the expert witnesses. Biggest winner here is really the attorneys and expert witnesses who got to bill their respective clients for unnecessary trial proceedings that never should have happened in the first place.
aah that rare moment the day job (patent attorney) and my hobbies collide
No, it serves as a warning to everyone that the US patent office is a joke.
So? I want to see the results of Nintendo counter suing iLife. Sue their asses
The warning is pointless, people will continue to sue Nintendo over stupid stuff. lol
Patentees = Patent Trolls
That's the beauty of law. Its open to interpretation and the why there are courts.
OK, but why are you advising the competition on how to beat you? This might cause restrictions on what you (Nintendo) can implement in future hardware if tech companies start being more specific in their patent applications.
@Rudy_Manchego Partially, but that wasn't the whole story. What it was, in simple terms, is that iLife claimed that Nintendo stole/used/copied certain features that were specific to their own motion technology, but they subsequently failed or even flat out refused to specify these features, probably because there were no comparable features at all, let alone ones so specific that they were an exact copy of what is found in the Wii remotes, so the case was basically nullified because of that.
@yuwarite Well, it could sue for defamation of character for saying the Switch has no games. 8*>
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney confirmed for Smash 😏
@yuwarite why would nintendo sue a copy cat? they've never had issues other companies copying their stuff so long as it's different enough to differentiate. hence the reason sony never got hit with a lawsuit over the playstation move, which looks like the love child of a wii remote & a ps2 controller that has gained aspirations on becoming an edgy emo dildo due to a messed up a childhood that one would expect from having parents such as those
hell, nintendo most likely wouldn't of gone after ilife either, but ilife decided to pick this fight and lost spectacularly not only the court case, but a good bit of their reputation as well.
@Smashfan502 I agree. My thought was that Nintendo could "sue" (which it can't) because of the statement since it had so many games on the Switch.
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