Patent infringement lawsuits are a daily occurrence in the tech world, and sometimes the non-famous parties involved end up winning. One such famous case is that of Apple versus those college guys that actually invented the processors Apple claims are made inside their brand. And now another high profile case of this nature is being settled. We’re talking about that of Nintendo vs iLife. Or actually iLife vs Nintendo, seeing as iLife was the plaintive party here.
What Happened
In 2013, iLife, a Dallas medical motion detection company, sued Japanese tech company Nintendo for infringing upon their patent when creating the Wii and the Wii U. iLife also sued four other companies in a similar way, but today we will discuss Nintendo only. And now a jury has actually found Nintendo guilty of this, so the company has to pay iLife 10.1 million dollars in damages.
The patent that iLife holds has to do with the very same bodily movement tech that is behind the Nintendo Wii. The only difference here is of scope: while Nintendo uses it for gaming, iLife uses it to help the elderly from a medical point of view. According to a rep for the company,
“iLife and its CEO Michael Lehrman are the original inventors of this technology, and the company does not enforce any patents that it did not develop. Unlike so-called patent trolls, iLife also has a history of developing and bringing to market products using their technology…The company spent many years researching and millions of dollars developing the environment-based motion detection technology at issue in this suit.”
However, Nintendo plans to appeal this verdict, so this won’t end here. It seems that the company is not ready to give more than 10 million dollars to a now defunct company that easily.