Sony successfully defends itself in court amid a controller patent lawsuit
Sony has won a lawsuit initiated by Authentic Enabling Technology (GET), accusing the PlayStation maker of infringing one of its patents on controller technology. At the time of filing, the most recent Sony console would have been the PlayStation 4.
As reported by Gamesindustry.bizthe lawsuit originally filed by GET in 2017 sought damages of $500 million (approximately £395 million), accusing Sony of infringing a patent entitled ‘Method and Apparatus for Producing a Combined Data Stream and Recovering Therefrom the Respective User Input Stream’ and on At least one input signal.’
GET had accused Sony of infringing the patent, mainly due to the way PlayStation controllers communicate with the console. In this case, that would amount to adopting a ‘slowly varying’ frequency for traditional button inputs, while implementing a higher frequency for motion-based controls. GET had argued that until the patent was created, there were no controllers or devices that could do this.
In response, Sony argued that GET could not provide any evidence that its technology was “structurally equivalent” to any component found in PlayStation devices.
The judge presiding over the case has now agreed with Sony, closing the case and declaring that GET had “failed to raise a dispute of fact” and concluding that Sony had not infringed the patent of Company.
This isn’t the only lawsuit GET has filed against a major gaming hardware manufacturer. a Reuters reports this details that GET has also filed an ongoing lawsuit against Nintendo over the very same patent. Although the courts ruled in Nintendo’s favor on this in 2020, it has since reopened as of 2022 and has yet to reach a conclusion.