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May 16, 2013

Nintendo Defends Patent for Second Time Against Patent Troll

By Jerry Biolchini, TMCnet Contributing Writer

Nintendo has successfully defended its patent for the Wii remote against Motiva - for a second time. Motiva, a hardware company, has even gone so far as to file with the ITC for sanctions against Nintendo, but has not succeeded in taking the gaming company down.  Motiva’s claim is that the game console company infringed on its patent when making the Wii remote.



What is interesting this time is that the court decision goes so far as to mention that Motiva is only motivated in pursuing for sanctions and has no intent to use the patent to create anything. This is somewhat significant due to the fact that the U.S. patent law protects the holder to exclude others from making, using, selling and offering designs for sale that are under the patent. There is no requirement to actually design or use a patent. One merely has to defend it. 

This has given rise to “patent trolls”. Patent trolls are companies, organizations or individuals who buy patents in order to use them as leverage against competition. A good example of this is the ongoing Apple (News - Alert) versus Samsung/Android litigation. There are even cases where competitors will band together and create corporate alliances in order to corner hundreds of patents to keep them out of others hands.

While patents have had a place in society to protect and encourage inventors and innovation alike, it is starting to take a dark turn. Everything from software patents to human genes can potentially be patented. Technology can be suppressed to preserve profit centers or protect an entire industry. While a simple game console controller is small in the scheme of things, it becomes far more complicated when say for example corn is genetically modified, patented and then only grown by selected farmers.

Intellectual property needs to be protected like other property, but at what cost? 

Does the U.S. patent law need to be revisited? Only time will tell.




Edited by Jamie Epstein
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