A federal jury has ruled in favor of a small Texas gaming company Anascape, announcing that Nintendo will have to pay the company $21 million USD for infringing patents while designing controllers for the Wii and Gamecube consoles.
The lawsuit was originally filed in late 2006 and was filed against Microsoft as well. The software giant however decided to settle the case out of court before the trial began.
Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta added that the company is looking to appeal and “expects the court to reduce the award significantly.”
The patents infringed had to do with the designs of the Wii Classic, WaveBird and Gamecube controllers. Scibettra added the company was pleased that no infringement was found having to do with any motion-sensing technology, such as the Wii and Nunchuck controllers.
Result for: federal jury
In the third of five lawsuits brought forth against Microsoft by Alcatel-Lucent SA, a federal jury has ruled that the Microsoft Xbox 360 console does not violate any patents held my Alcatel-Lucent and threw the case out.
The technologies company had wanted $420 million USD in damages. On the other side however, Microsoft had counter-sued for $11.5 million USD in damages, claiming that Alcatel-Lucent had infringed one of their patents.
The jury ruled that “one of Microsoft’s patents was invalid and found that Alcatel-Lucent didn’t violate another four of the company’s patents.”
Last year, in the first of the five trials, a jury ruled that Microsoft’s Windows Media Player “infringed Alcatel-Lucent’s patents for the MP3 digital-audio standard” and awarded the latter company a huge $1.52 billion USD settlement. The verdict however is now on appeal and it appears the damages award will be lessened.
Two months ago, another federal jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent $368 million USD for “Microsoft’s infringement of its patents for touch-screen form entry and use of a computer stylus.”
