Nintendo Knocks Out $10 Million ‘Wiimote’ Patent Verdict on Appeal
Written February 3, 2020
The US District Court for the Northern District of Texas on January 17, 2020, invalidated iLife Technologies Inc.'s $10.1 million patent infringement verdict against Nintendo of America over the latter's Wii and Wii U motion control wands known as "Wiimotes". iLife Techs. Inc. v. Nintendo of Am. Inc., N.D. Tex., No. 3:13-cv-04987, 1/17/20.
iLife sued Nintendo for infringing a claim of US Patent No. 6,864,796, which covered “a system for evaluating body movement relative to an environment” with “a sensor that detects dynamic and static accelerative phenomena of the body.”
A jury found Nintendo’s “wiimote” infringed the patent and awarded iLife $10.1 million as a lump sum reasonable royalty. However, the district court reversed, finding that the claim was directed to the abstract idea of “gathering, processing, and transmitting information,” and was “not any less abstract because the information is of a specific type—dynamic and static accelerative phenomena.”