Nintendo of America Inc.'s escape from a $10 million patent verdict may be a warning for patent owners and challengers, amid uncertainty in trial courts over how and when to decide patent eligibility.
A North Texas jury found that Nintendo infringed iLife Technologies’ motion detection patent with its Wii controllers. But the judge threw out the verdict in January after finding the disputed claim shouldn’t have been patented because it covered an abstract idea.
Courts in the past generally have decided patent eligibility questions early in infringement cases. But a pair of U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ...