Nintendo Stomps Motiva's Patent Infringement Claims

from the one-down-many-more-to-go dept

Businessweek is reporting that Nintendo has won a patent infringement case brought by Motiva. Back in November 2008, Motiva filed a patent infringement suit, via the ITC loophole against Nintendo over its 7,292,151 patent for "Human Movement Measurement System" filed in June 2005 and granted in November 2007. Just this week the ITC ruled that Nintendo's Wii and Wii remote did not infringe on Motiva's patent and will not be blocked from import into the US. The judge on the case found that Motiva had not established a market behind its invention which is necessary to win an ITC case. The case still needs to be reviewed by the full six-member commission of the ITC, but Nintendo remains confident that they will also rule in Nintendo's favor -- which seems likely, since the commission frequently follows such rulings by ITC judges

This case has a couple of similarities to the two recent patent suits brought against Nintendo. Much like those patent suits, Motiva's involved a patent that was filed for the same year Nintendo introduced the Wii and the Wii Remote to the world. As with the UltimatePointer suit, Motiva does not have a product on the market, as can be seen by the lack of any product details on Motiva's website -- which, again, was fatal for the case, since the ITC cases (unlike federal court cases) do require some actual products. It's good to see the ITC recognize this case made little sense, and hopefully it bodes well for Nintendo's other cases brought by patent holders. However, just the fact that it keeps getting hit with questionable patent suits again should raise questions about the state of the patent system today.

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