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Jury Finds Nintendo Wii Infringes Dallas Inventor's Patent, Awards $10 Million (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the time-to-pay-up dept.

A jury has ruled that Nintendo must pay $10.1 million because its Wii and Wii U systems infringe a patent belonging to a Dallas medical motion-detection company. Ars Technica reports: iLife sued Nintendo (PDF) in 2013 after filing lawsuits against four other companies in 2012. The case went to a jury trial in Dallas, and yesterday the jury returned its verdict (PDF). They found that Nintendo infringed U.S. Patent No. 6,864,796, first filed in 1999, which describes "systems and methods for evaluating movement of a body relative to an environment." The patent drawings show a body-mounted motion detector that could detect falls in the elderly, which is the market that iLife was targeting, according to its now defunct website. The $10.1 million was less than 10 percent of what iLife's attorneys had been asking for. When the trial began in Dallas on August 21, Law360 reported that iLife lawyers asked the jury for a $144 million payout. That damage demand was based on a royalty of $4 per Wii unit, multiplied by 36 million systems sold in the six years before the lawsuit was filed.

15 of 113 comments (clear)

  1. Is anyone surprised? by renegadesx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Another day, another patent troll gets millions for abusing the patent system.

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    1. Re:Is anyone surprised? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      iLife appears to be the actual inventor of the patented technology, not someone who acquired the patent second-hand purely for the purposes of suing people, so I would argue that they are not patent trolls as the term is normally used. Without actually reading the patent, I wouldn't like to comment on whether there is any substance to the patent itself, but not every patent infringement lawsuit can be considered patent trolling.

    2. Re:Is anyone surprised? by truedfx · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Patent troll" usually means to a company which buys up patents and doesn't create anything but lawsuits. In this case, the lawsuit was brought by a company which actually attempted to sell a product which made use of the patent. So, regardless of whether the patent is valid, not a patent troll, unless you have an unconventional definition of the term.

    3. Re:Is anyone surprised? by queazocotal · · Score: 5, Informative

      Having skimmed the patent, it's basically bullshit.

      It is simply describing a possibly wireless device with an accelerometer, running some program.
      This is, in 1999, exactly as any engineer would design a fall detection thing. It adds nothing to the knowledge of mankind, and in no way deserves protection.
      It should not have passed the novelty test.

    4. Re: Is anyone surprised? by Cito · · Score: 4, Informative

      the man invented the motion devices first for medical equipment. not a patent troll, he owns the patent on his own invention. it didn't sell not his fault but he still invented it and owns the invention. Nintendo using the exact same motion controller copied the man's invention, and Nintendo wii have been used in medical symposiums as a proof of concept use in the medical field, therefore not only did they steal the patent they also showed at it medical symposiums too.

      Nintendo should have been fined higher for blatant theft. They whine about pirates but they pirated their own console

    5. Re:Is anyone surprised? by SeattleLawGuy · · Score: 2

      "Twenty years later, I can say X is exactly what I would have done with my knowledge 20 years ago" is just not super reliable evidence, because of hindsight bias. While I think there should be a little more room for testimony that "of course this was obvious. My grandmother could have designed this with both hands tied behind her back while she was falling," patent law frowns on using guesses about what was or wasn't obvious in the past.

      That's why they look to things like suggestions from the time in question about combining two things or solving a problem a certain way, rather than asking engineers today who are used to everyone walking around with an accelerometer in their pocket how they would solve the problem.

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    6. Re:Is anyone surprised? by Solandri · · Score: 2

      Using accelerometers to detect motion (actually changes in motion) is blindingly obvious because that's what they're designed to do.

      But if you want to be a stickler about where they're used and for what purpose, crash test dummies have been using accelerometers for this purpose in human body analogues since at least 1997, pre-dating and invalidating this patent.

  2. My opinion by ewanm89 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Is iLife a patent troll: no they actually made a product and released it using the patent.

    Is the patent valid? Well according to this judge and jury yes, according to most of us probably not. The patent covers using a 3-axis accelerometer and some sort of data processing to detect motion of a body. Well in physics a body is any cohesive group of matter that moves, for example the earth is a planetary body. The V2 missile in WW2 used 2 gyros and an accelerometer in its inertial navigation system, I wonder how many missiles since? More recently the year before filing date on the patent the Amida Simputer was commercialy released in India, a handheld Linux based computer with an accelerometer based gesture interface. Even if these were not using a 3-axis accelerometer is using a 3-axis accelerometer instead of a 1 axis of 2 axis or multiple accelerometers a novel application?

    1. Re:My opinion by Theaetetus · · Score: 2

      Infringement litigation does not look at the validity of a patent. If Nintendo wants to challenge its validity in court it has to sue in a separate trial, if the patent gets invalidated than the litigation trial ruling gets vacated

      That's not true at all. I don't know where you got this idea, but it's simply incorrect: invalidity is a defense to infringement and comes in every single infringement trial. In fact, Nintendo made two separate arguments here having to do with invalidity.
      In fact, your statement is not just incorrect, it's the precise opposite of correct: failure to challenge the validity of the patent here would waive those defenses and Nintendo would be estopped from being able to bring a separate claim of invalidity.

      Come on, where did you get this from?

  3. Re:But it says the patent applies to laptops too.. by tomhath · · Score: 2
    The patent essentially reinvents Inertial Navigation

    An inertial navigation system (INS) is a navigation aid that uses a computer, motion sensors (accelerometers) and rotation sensors (gyroscopes) to continuously calculate via dead reckoning the position, orientation, and velocity (direction and speed of movement) of a moving object without the need for external references.

    Using that in the context of detecting someone falling is hardly innovative; but even if it is that wouldn't matter because that's not what the Wii does.

  4. But they didn't invent it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Read the patent, its a sensor they didn't invent, connected to a processor they didn't invent, attached to a body to detect falls.

    The people who did invent the sensor, had some of their value stolen by this company because this company patented one of the uses of their motion sensor (detecting people falling). The jury here, widens that to cover more general body movements during games, i.e. increases the amount of theft of IP that this company did.

    This is a troll that stole some of the functional uses for the motion sensor invention.

    If a company invents a flying car, and cannot sell it because a troll has patented "flying car used to go to work, flying car used to go to school, flying car used to go shopping", that's true *theft* of IP there. It denies the true inventor the right to profit from their invention.

  5. Re: Patents == Theft by mwvdlee · · Score: 2

    Sigh.
    Patent != copyright.

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  6. Seems to be a "use patent" by eatvegetables · · Score: 2

    The patent in question seems to describe a "new use" for existing technology. Assuming that there is no prior art describing this new use, then it's quite possibly a perfectly valid patent. However, wii remote controls are used for gaming, not for determining when an elderly person has fallen (unless there is an old person falling game out there ...a horrifying thought to be sure). The provided and rather abbreviated description of Nintendo's defense appears to be exactly this. I'd go with Nintendo. I can't see how they lost this case.

  7. Maybe this helps Carlos Anzola by crepe-boy · · Score: 2, Interesting
    He's the person who invented the kinect system, sent a prototype to Microsoft, who then magically created their own version looking just like it.

    https://hackaday.com/2011/07/14/did-microsoft-steal-the-kinect/

  8. Meh. by XSportSeeker · · Score: 2

    As always, read the entire article.
    The lawsuit is bullshit, the company never sold any product with the patented tech, and it wasn't anything but a design composed of components iLife did not develop. It's a patent troll through and through.
    Nintendo is also appealing the decision, so this isn't final.