Valve Earns Chance to Contest Game Controller Patent’s Validity

Ironburg Inventions Ltd.'s $4 million video game controller patent verdict is in jeopardy after the Federal Circuit said Thursday that Valve Corp. must be allowed to argue that the underlying patent is invalid.

Valve shouldn’t have been blocked from arguing that US Patent No. 8,641,525 is invalid for failing to flag a prior game controller invention in an earlier administrative challenge to the Ironburg patent at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. The inventions—contained in a patent application published by the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2010 and named for Miami-based inventor David Kotkin—appeared in an initial batch of ...