Nintendo has won another patent case, this time revolving around its Mii characters. The case itself sounds like something out of science fiction, as it was filed by RecogniCorp LLC, a patent-trolling company who asserted that Nintendo’s use of Mii characters infringed on a way of storing police sketch-artist data. What. The case was filed back in 2011 and was resolved in a Seattle federal court.
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.
Obviously this was a silly case of a patent troll playing fast and loose with the interpretation of the law, as the judge ruled. It’s nice to see Nintendo continually coming out on top versus these patent trolls, too.
