Nintendo wins $8m in 15-year-old lawsuit over Wii controller patent

Nintendo has won a 15-year-old lawsuit against a third-party Wii controller seller, securing $8.2 million (€7 million) in damages, interest, and legal fees.

As spotted by The Games Fray, Nintendo’s legal team in Germany has confirmed that the judgment, reached at the end of October, orders BigBen Interactive (now Nacon) to pay damages and interest for infringing a European patent relating to Nintendo’s Wii controller.

While Nacon has the right to appeal, Nintendo’s lawyers say the ruling “is remarkable” given proceedings to determine the amount of damages are rare in German patent law, plus the court assumed that had it not been for BigBen’s third-party hardware, Nintendo would have made 100% of those sales.

The Court had already decided in 2011 that BigBen had infringed Nintendo’s patent, but BigBen argued that buyers who did not buy its products would have opted for other third-party controllers. However, the court found that these third-party products were also “highly likely to infringe the patent-in-suit.”

“The ruling ends first-instance proceedings that dragged on for more than seven years, illustrating the time challenges involved in enforcing claims for damages for patent infringement in Germany,” the lawyers wrote. “BigBen had delayed the proceedings several times, for example, by rejecting the court-appointed expert.

“These delaying tactics have now proved costly: the interest on the claim, amounting to 5 percentage points above the basic rate of interest, has significantly increased BigBen’s payment obligation and accounts for a substantial part of the total claim of just under EUR 7 million.”

Nacon is appealing the judgment.

Last month, the head of the US Patent Office announced it was reexamining a decision to award Nintendo a patent that protects a common gameplay mechanic wherein an in-game character summons another sub-character to support it in battle in one of two battle modes.

The shocking decision does not necessarily mean the award will be revoked immediately, but does intimate that USPTO director, John A. Squires, has concerns about U.S. Patent No. 12,403,397, which may well result in its eventual revocation.