Nintendo generally has good luck (or great lawyers) in dealing with the myriad of patent lawsuits that have been brought against them over the years, and thankfully, that good luck looks to continue into 2016.
A company by the name of RecogniCorp LLC filed a case in 2011 against the big N, claiming that their Mii characters infringed upon their “storing police sketch-artist data” patent, or more specifically, some math operations which are used to generate Miis. Needless to say, that didn’t work out for the patent-assertion company and Nintendo came out on top.
Check out Nintendo’s announcement below explaining their latest win.
Nintendo has prevailed in a patent case in Seattle federal court concerning the company?s Mii characters. Judge Richard A. Jones found that U.S. Patent No. 8,005,303, which relates to ways of storing police sketch-artist data, was invalid. RecogniCorp LLC, a patent-assertion company, filed this case in 2011, claiming that the Mii characters used on Nintendo?s systems, including Wii U, Wii and Nintendo 3DS, infringed the patent.
Judge Jones held that the patent was an improper attempt to monopolize mathematical operations, which cannot be patented. The Judge therefore did not need to rule directly on Nintendo?s non-infringement arguments.
?We are very pleased with Judge Jones? decision, which finally put an end to RecogniCorp?s attempt to cover inventions to which it has no rights,? said Ajay Singh, Nintendo of America?s Director of Litigation and Compliance. ?Nintendo will continue to protect its products and innovations against accusations of patent infringement.?