Judge halves Nintendo 3DS patent damages
A US judge has cut in half a $30.2 million fine handed to Nintendo earlier this year for infringing a former employee’s patent covering 3D image technology.
In March the Japanese company’s portable video game console the 3DS was found to infringe an invention, owned by Seijiro Tomita, which protects a way of displaying 3D images without the need for 3D glasses.
Tomita, a Japanese engineer, retired from Nintendo in 2002 to focus on his own inventions. A year later he apparently demoed his 3D image technology – patented in the US five years later – to Nintendo officials.
In a suit filed in 2011, he alleged that Nintendo used information from his demo to create the 3DS, a console released in 2010 which can project 3D images to the naked eye.
After originally ruling that Nintendo should pay just over $30 million for patent infringement, Judge Jed Rakoff on August 14 cut the fine to $15.1 million. According to Reuters, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York judge said the award was “intrinsically excessive” and unsupported by the evidence at trial.
Rakoff said trial evidence showed the 3DS is not profitable and that much of the technology supporting it does not infringe Tomita’s patent.
The news agency reported that Tomita has until August 23 to either accept the reduced damages or apply for a new damages trial.
Lawyers representing Tomita and Nintendo did not respond to a request for comment.
In another case of patent litigation involving Nintendo, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit upheld the company’s win against a company called IA Labs in June. Nintendo’s products including the Wii Balance Board and Wii Fit had been accused of infringing patents directed to an exercise system that links to a computer.
In the 2013 fiscal year (ending March 31), Nintendo reported an operating loss of 36 billion yen ($367.7 million). The annual report, published in August, showed that the company has sold nearly 270 million home consoles since 1983 as well as nearly 2.2 billion units of software. The number of handheld products sold equals about 385 million, while games stand at more than 1.9 billion.
