FX.co ★ Judge Rules $500 Mln Patent Infringement Case In Sony's Favor

A federal judge in Delaware dismissed a half-billion-dollar lawsuit by Genuine Enabling Technology against Sony Corp. The judge found no satisfactory evidence of patent infringement.

In 2017, Genuine Enabling Technology claimed that Sony's products, including PS3 and PS4 consoles and DualShock 3, DualShock 4, and Move controllers, violated its '730 Patent. The patent is titled 'Method and Apparatus for Producing a Combined Data Stream and Recovering Therefrom the Respective User Input Stream and at Least One Input Signal.' The company alleged that these Sony products infringe this patent.

According to Genuine Enabling Technology, Sony's PlayStation consoles and controllers are able to communicate with each other using a signal transmission system as outlined in the '730 patent. This involves using a separate, 'slow-varying' frequency signal for button inputs, and a different, higher frequency signal for motion control inputs.

Nonetheless, Sony refuted this claim, arguing that there was no evidence to prove that any part of its controllers is "structurally equivalent" to the system depicted in the diagrams of Genuine Enabling Technology's patent.

Judge Mitchell Goldberg concurred with Sony, stating that Genuine Enabling Technology failed to present any substantial dispute of fact. Following this decision, the lawsuit was officially closed.

In an earlier but related case, Genuine Enabling Technology had filed a similar lawsuit against Nintendo, alleging patent infringement. Although the court initially ruled in favor of Nintendo in 2020, the US Court of Appeals reversed this decision in 2022. This case is still in process.