Nintendo Ordered to Pay $10 Million Following Patent Lawsuit Loss

Sucks for Nintendo. Hopefully they are able to appeal.

Nintendo can well afford the fine. That's like chump change to them.

Yup that'll happen.

Hope this isn't a sign of thing to come.

I wish patent-trolls would just crawl back under their bridges for good!

Huh. Have they lost to similar lawsuits in the past?

iLife needs to get a life. This is just ridiculous.

Curious... Why hasn't Sony also been targeted by this? They also sell controllers with motion controls (DualShock 3, 4 and Move controller).

I think Whitehead jinxed Nintendo with his Switch lawsuit article a few weeks ago.

"Nintendo wins the majority of these cases and, even on the rare occasions it loses initially, seems to have the clout to appeal and clear cases in the end."

Trolls suck

I love that Luigi Wii mote.

You win some you lose some.
Two sides to every story.
Big company's will alway win at the end

Nintendo should just let them keep it. Texas kinda needs the money right now anyway.

I didn't know Philips was close enough to winning for Nintendo to sign a deal with them.

Those guys have always played rough, and I wonder what it was they managed to fell Nintendo on.

@SLIGEACH_EIRE I'm by no means versed in the legalese of these things nor am I too familiar with the specifics of this case. With that being said, I wonder if whether or not Nintendo can afford to pay the fine is actually relevant, but more so the precedence if they didn't challenge this would set.

Nintendo will definitely appeal to prevent a precedent and because they probably didn't actually lose the legal fight. These kind of lawsuits are always lost by foreign companies in the US because the people who choose the winner have no idea what the actual law is and just votes against the foreigners. A panel of Judges, on appeal, will over turn this is a heartbeat because it's not a legitimate lawsuit, just a patent troll.

Wow. Just because you can't earn money doesn't mean you hit up successful companies like Nintendo with pointless and pathetic lawsuits just to earn your dishonest daily bread and make some publicity out of it, this is as worse as that GameVice crap.

Nintendo better crush these guys. And to those who are saying it's a small amount, why should Nintendo pay even one dollar to such a company and also for such a pathetic reason?

@SLIGEACH_EIRE @UmbreonsPapa Setting precedence is exactly the reason. Nintendo has often fought cases not for money but rather so people don't take advantage of them. Since Nintendo is rather experimental with their hardware, they're bound to get a lot of lawsuits. To back down would create an image that anyone take claim their patent was "stolen."

Of course this ruling came out of Texas, which is basically patent-troll Mecca. This company seems pretty vague, too. Very little footprint online, and there are numerous companies using similar names. I have no doubt this will get overturned, probably on the first appeal. This company was initially asking for $144-million, so clearly the case was nowhere near as strong as they hoped it was.

@UmbreonsPapa
That's what I would worry about as well.
The amount of time they would have to take out for combating patent disputes would skyrocket if it got out that they accepted losses in cases they know they can win.

where can i patent a product that detects people standing up?

@w00dm4n I was thinking of patenting a system where when you breath an automated system counts if your breathed. Where can I patent this idea?

Looks like iLife bought up a patent related to a defunct product for monitoring elderly people to automatically check when they fall. A good idea to use accelerometers for this task from the originating company, as previous alarms relied on the elderly person pushing a button, not possible if you're unconscious.

However, I can't see how using accelerometers in this way is in any way patentable as it's the whole purpose of accelerometers; to measure the movement of things! Seems the same as using accelerometers in magnetic HDDs to lift the head off the platter if the laptop is dropped.

You can tell iLife is in it just for the money when their statement is just basically an ad, with no relation to the actual issue they "suffered".

Nintendo is going to win this, and iLife is either going to go bankrupt, or they will have to pay way more than the 10 million that they are asking from Nintendo.

Their claim is literally wafer thin, so I have no idea how the hell that Texan judge was able to rule in their favor in the first place.

Suppose I could sue iLife for imitating Mother Nature, since the accelerometer is simply a very rudimentary version of the inner organs that both humans and animals possess to sense their position relative to the ground. Then again: that's not patented...

@Wexter we have to be quick about it, hopefully Sony or Microsoft will want to use it and buy our companies out.

Nintendo has to fight things and be difficult

Ninty have obviously copied some part of this patent design, so yeah can't blame them for calling foul play by Ninty. I am sure Ninty would file a law suit if a company made a very similar copy of mario platformers and called it mario oddessey

"Nintendo looks forward to raising those issues with the district court and with the court of appeals." - Nintendo looking forward to raising hell! Lol

@Racthet916

Don't we all.

That's hysterical and awful. How is iLife's product anything like a video game system?

The patent system is all messed up.

They filed in Dallas...patent troll central. Appeal process will take care of this nonsense.

Sarcastically, of course, i'm going to suggest this is karma, and likely the amount of profit they made off of the mini consoles

Nothing is final until the appeal is heard. The fact the plaintiffs were awarded about 7% of what they sought tells me they don't have a great claim.

@UmbreonsPapa lol Nintendo can afford it.even with the loss of the Wii u Nintendo still has more money than Sony and Microsoft combined

A medical(I guess based on the article) company sued the Big N?

Seems odd as so many controllers have them, unless they've paid the company to license it. What is this company, have they actually done anything with the tech, or just patent trolls?

Just another day in the life of Nintendo. The best will always be bullied. Oh well,10 mil is chump change to a company like Nintendo.

I wonder if there's a little club house out there, somewhere where these trolls all gather together and discuss who's next in line to sue Nintendo.

@yuwarite its not motion controls that are the target, it's very specific ways of doing it. The accelerometer in the Wii remote is not the same as the one in Sony and Microsofts controllers.

@Tasuki Hmm, what about smart phones? What about practically every piece of tech to be developed in the past decade? What a joke.

Keep fighting, Nintendo !
Kick their butt (If they have butt) !!

Everyone wants a piece of Nintendo's pie. These tiny irrelevant companies need to stfu.

American patent system - A RUNNING JOKE.

@MonkiPlays They've lost a few before in the first bout in US state courts but appealed and won in high courts. The state courts in USA are corrupt and all down to who you are friends with.

The only company they signed a deal with was Philips.

Everyone wants a piece of the big pie...

@Destron I don't buy that.

I just think the Wii was the system most people remember for using motion controls, thus an easy target for patent trolls to go after.

If this is indeed patent trolling, Nintendo should take a leaf out of this book:

https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2017/08/30/the-best-defense-is-attack-and-that-now-includes-when-fighting-patent-trolls/

Hmmm how can I get tons of money without any work? Oh here's an idea! Sue Nintendo over stuff! Hmmm now what to pick..... OMG Nintendo completely copied me with their game ARMS! I have ARMS and can punch people! I'm going to sue them for 10 Million dollars!

They could make that much overnight if they just made more SNES Classics.

How the hell could this happen, I can't see a single wii/wiiu game that requires you to fall over with a device in ya hand to get a action out. lol I hope iLife ends up losing everything they have.

They could easily pay for this lawsuit with plenty of cash left over if they simply sold enough NES mini and SNES mini systems to meet the customer demand. Ah, but what do I know as a retired marketing executive, eh?

@Neopolss Same came to my mind, yes. When I think iLife, I immediately think Apple's multimedia software pack. If anything, that name would be infringement all the way to the consumer's level.

Dallas patient jury just needs one thing to decide a case USA vs (rest of world) vote USA. A company I worked with fought and lost 17 at jury and won all 17 at appeal. I understand it is supported as it funds a lot of legal practice and the court system bringing in not insignificant revenue to the city but is widely recognized to be a flawed system.

They have nothing on the nintendo tech, this'll get reversed for sure.

I would never buy a philips product again...

First they make terrible Mario games in the 90s ( no wonder nintendo became so careful with there ip )

Then stab Nintendo in the back with patent trolling.

It's unfair you can write a patent so vague that your product could apply to anything. Hope Nintendo pulls out a win, but also hope "that-one-guy-who-seems-to-have-the-same-line-in-every-court-case" gets a new line. And it's not Phoenix.

@nab1 The statement isn't by iLife, but by the law company they hired. So their only purpose was this law suit. As such, they fully succeeded and are perfectly entitled to sound like an "ad". They didn't "suffer" from anything.

And what about that "Wikipad" case?

I remember all those lucrative Nintendo games that detected when I fell down, good times.

Wait...

@Exy Do you believe that maybe heaven punish Texas because of this? Nintendo means leave luck to heaven, when you sue Nintendo, you go against heaven so heaven sent you a hurricane instead. Also I doubt iLife care about the disaster in Houston.

@yuwarite then do the homework yourself. Look at the Wii remote and accelerometer patents, and look at the patents for other controllers, cell phones, etc. They are different technologies. Just because 2 similar things exist don't meant they cane be done 2 different ways.

You don't think the PS4, galaxy line of phones, or iPhones would not be worth getting a piece of

Keep in mind, this lawsuit was filed in 2013, before the PS4. It is simply a company (patent troll) going after another company for money, that's all. Also, it's not always about the tech used, but the concept of 'idea theft'.