LEVEL COMPLETE

Picture, a world without Game Boy and you will find a world without innovation and imagination. You will also find a world with millions of displaced youth with nothing to do, reverting back to that archaic way of life of interacting with each other. This could have been the case if Quintal Research Group, Inc. had their way.

Quintal Research Group, Inc. is a small Computer Games Company located in Pacifica, California; who many in the patent industry warmly refer to as “Patent Trolls”. A “Patent Troll” is a person or company that attempts to enforce patent rights against infringers far beyond the patent’s actual value or contribution to prior art. Patent trolls often do not manufacture products or supply services based upon the patents in dispute.

Quintal initiated a lawsuit against Nintendo, one of the biggest gaming industries in the world, in February 2013. The lawsuit alleged that many of Nintendo’s hand-held systems, including the Nintendo DS, 3DS, and Game Boy Advance infringed upon Quintal's patent for a "Computerized Information Retrieval System." Quintal detailed how the portable handheld devices manufactured by Nintendo infringed on their patent. Nintendo’s devices had a generally rectangular shape with a display screen on one side using a frame with an ergonomic placement of finger controls, a pair of thumb controls on either side of the screen, and a pair of finger controls on the top of the display with at least one of the finger controls being a cursor or pointer control. These features were identical to Quintal’s description of their “Computerized Information Retrieval System."

Nintendo filed a motion for summary judgement based non-infringement, which was granted by California Federal Judge Saundra Armstrong. Judge Armstrong in her opinion wrote “The buttons located on the left and right sides of the display screen do not correspond in shape, size or position on each side of the centerline of the display screen, and hence, do not infringe Claims 1 or 9 of the ‘944 Patent.”

The Patent world is a complicated one; some might argue that the Judge’s ruling took small trivial difference into consideration when ruling for Nintendo; however others can argue she was right in splitting the hairs. Maybe Quintal is a troll or maybe this is another example of the little guy being squashed by big business. Guess with this win Nintendo can move to the next level.

By: Astrid Johnson – Associate Editor of Business, Technology, and Medicine

Photo credit: Mauricio Giraldo via Flickr.com cc

Sources used:

http://venturebeat.com/2015/07/21/nintendo-wins-patent-case-for-3ds-technology/

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150721006672/en/Nintendo-Wins-Patent-Case-Filed-Nintendo-3DS

http://www.law360.com/articles/681925