Nintendo has won a 15-year legal battle with Nacon over Wii Remote patent infringement
The fight may not be completely over yet, though, as Nacon is appealing
Nintendo has won a legal battle with Nacon over Wii Remote patent infringement, 15 years after the lawsuit was filed.
Back in 2010, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in Germany against BigBen Interactive (which became Nacon in 2020), claiming its third-party Wii Remote controllers infringed on Nintendo’s patents.
The patent covered a game controller “with the ergonomic features characteristic of Nintendo’s Wii Remote”, as well as sensor technology including a camera (to track the sensor bar) and an acceleration sensor.
A year later the Mannheim Regional Court found that BigBen had indeed infringed on the patent, and this was fully confirmed again by the Karlsrushe Higher Regional Court in 2017.
During this time the patent’s validity was challenged, but both the European Patent Office and Federal Patent said it was fully protected.
Meanwhile, the Court of Justice of the European Union and the German Federal Supreme Court both sided with Nintendo in 2017 and 2018 respectively, as Nacon continued to appeal the decision.
Now, as confirmed by Nintendo’s German counsel (and spotted by Games Fray), Mannheim Regional Court has finally awarded Nintendo damages of more than €4 million plus interest, coming to a total of just under €7 million.
“BigBen had delayed the proceedings several times, for example by rejecting the court-appointed expert,” Nintendo’s legal team said in a statement.
“These delaying tactics have now proved costly – the interest on the claim, amounting to 5 percentage points above the basic rate of interest, has significantly increased BigBen’s payment obligation and accounts for a substantial part of the total claim of just under €7 million.
The saga isn’t entirely over yet, as Nacon has now appealed the ruling to the Higher Regional Court of Karlsruhe.
