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Nintendo Controllers Banned After Bid for New Trial Rejected

By Chris Bennett, Tudor Carsten, Michael R. Coburn, Sarah Dale-Harris, Pablo Guzman, Danielle (Dani) Lemon, Chris Metcalfe and David Spratley

U.S. District Judge Ron Clark has rejected Nintendo Co's bid for a new trial and forced the company to either post a bond or put royalties in escrow to avoid a ban in the US on some of its controllers. The bid was made by Nintendo in an effort to overturn a May 2008 decision wherein it was held that some of Nintendo's Wii and GameCube Controllers infringed on patents owned by Anascape Ltd. Judge Clark's ban will not come into force until Nintendo's appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeal for the Federal Circuit has been heard. The potential ban will only affect sales of Wii Classic Controller, WaveBird controller and Nintendo GameCube controller. In rejecting Nintendo's bid, Judge Clark found that there was sufficient evidence on the trial record to support the jury's finding as well as their damage award of $21 million.

Anascape sought a ban on the controllers because they want to enter the controller market but cannot because Nintendo has 'clogged the channel'. Nintendo denies both the validity of Anascape's patent and that their controllers use Anascape technology.

Coverage here (Gamedaily).

Our previous coverage here.

Submitted by Sylvie Lang, Summer Student

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Full post as published by Video Game Law Blog on July 25, 2008 (boomark / email).