The Big N Will Appeal the Decision
A company called iLife has been awarded $10 million from a Texas jury after suing Nintendo for patent infringement relating to the Wii remote technology found in the Wii and Wii U consoles.
According to a developing report from Glixel, Nintendo of America infringed on iLife’s motion-sensing accelerometer technology. Nintendo has already provided a statement on the court battle and their decision to appeal it:
“On Aug. 31, 2017, a jury in Texas found that certain Wii and Wii U video game systems and software bundles infringed a patent belonging to iLife Technologies Inc. related to detecting if a person has fallen down.”
“The jury awarded iLife $10 million in damages. Nintendo disagrees with the decision, as Nintendo does not infringe iLife’s patent and the patent is invalid. Nintendo looks forward to raising those issues with the district court and with the court of appeals.”Â
iLife is no doubt thrilled with the verdict but it is significantly less than the $144 million they set out to obtain nearly four years ago when the lawsuit was raised. iLife Technologies uses its own tech that helps to monitor infants and the elderly in case of major incidents. iLife argued that their tech was used and found in the Wii remote controller.
Nintendo has been fighting motion-sensing technology lawsuits ever since the Wii was released in 2006. The majority of those cases saw the big N come out the victor (including a win against UltimatePointer LLC) but a loss to Philips in 2014 resulted in the signing of a global patent license agreement. iLife’s win yesterday appears to be because of that license agreement.
This doesn’t appear to be the end for either company and we’ll be keeping tabs on the events as they happen.