Nintendo Loses Patent Suit In East Texas, Of Course

from the prior-art,-anyone? dept

The latest in a long line of patent lawsuits in every patent hoarders favorite district of East Texas involves the game controllers used by Nintendo. A company holds a patent on a 3D controller and sued Nintendo (and Microsoft) for supposedly violating the patent. Not surprisingly, the jury found in favor of the patent holder. Juries quite often side with the patent holder, no matter how questionable the patent may be. In this case, there would seem to be a ton of prior art raising validity questions. The patent itself was filed in November of 2000, at which point there were already numerous game controllers that seem to meet most of the criteria outlined in the claims. Whatever minor differences there may have been between what was on the market and what's in the claims should be seen as an obvious iteration of game controllers. As for Microsoft's involvement, it paid up to settle last month, once again showing how it's often cheaper to just pay up rather than to fight questionable patents. And, that, of course, is why we will keep seeing more and more questionable patents being filed. It's just so lucrative.