Genuine Enabling Technology LLC v. Nintendo Co Ltd

District Court, W.D. Washington·Decided July 30, 2020·No. 2:19-cv-00351·Unknown

Opinion

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT WESTERN DISTRICT OF WASHINGTON

GENUINE ENABLING TECHNOLOGY Case No. C19-351RSM LLC., ORDER RE: CLAIM CONSTRUCTION Plaintiff, AND GRANTING DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT v.

NINTENDO CO., LTD. and NINTENDO OF AMERICA INC., Defendants.

I. INTRODUCTION This matter comes before the Court on the Defendants Nintendo Co., Ltd. and Nintendo of America, Inc. (“Nintendo”)’s Motion for Summary Judgment on the grounds of noninfringement and invalidity. Dkt. #90. Plaintiff Genuine Enabling Technology (“GET”) opposes Nintendo’s Motion. Dkt. #98. Parties submitted briefs regarding Claim Construction, Dkts. ## 85, 86, 92, 93, and oral argument was held on February 24, 2020 pursuant to Markman v. Westview Instruments, Inc., 52 F.3d 967 (Fed. Cir. 1995). Having reviewed the parties’ briefing, the appropriate portions of the records, and the relevant law, and having considered the arguments and evidence presented in the Markman Hearing, the Court GRANTS Nintendo’s motion for summary judgment.1 A. The ‘730 Patent GET brings this action against Nintendo claiming that five Nintendo products infringe U.S. Patent No. 6,219,730 (the ‘730 patent): (1) the Wii Remote and Wii Remote Plus; (2) the Nunchuk; (3) the WiiU Game Pad; (4) the Switch Joy-Con Controllers’ and (5) the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller. The patent, owned by inventor Nghi Nho Nguyen, is entitled “Method and Apparatus for Producing a Combined Data Stream and Recovering Therefrom the Respective User Input Stream and at Least One Input Signal” and was issued by the United States Patent and Trademark Office on April 17, 2001. Dkt. #86-1. GET claims that Nintendo’s controllers and console systems contain features and/or functionality that infringe claims 10, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 21, 22, 23, and 25 of the ‘730 patent. The patented technology involves how a user-input device (UID) may communicate remotely with a computer so that different input signals are received and transmitted via the same link. Typical UIDs, as identified in the patent, include a mouse, trackball, or keyboard. Id. at col. 1, lines 16-18. Computers also use “various kinds of input/output (“I/O”) cards or devices to handle I/O signals or information.” Id. at col. 1, lines 16-17. Typical I/O cards include a “sound card handling I/O speech signals and the fax/modem device transferring information over the telephone line.” Id. at 19-21. Because the devices and cards share common computer resources, the proliferation of cards and devices that offer new functions creates a problem of how to 1 Parties have requested oral argument on the summary judgment motion, see Dkt. #90 at 1; Dkt. #98 at 1, but the court finds oral argument unnecessary to its disposition of the motion, see Local Rules LCR 7(b)(4). efficiently use limited computer resources shared between them. Jd. at 22-23; 33-36 (“As computer technology advances, more types of cards and devices are offered for richer sets of functions; efficient use of computer resources becomes critical.”) In light of this computer resource problem, Mr. Nguyen designed the claimed invention to “offer[] a new kind of UID utilizing the computer resources efficiently and enabling a mode

of remote interaction between the computer and its user.” Jd. at 42-44. GET explains that Mr. Nguyen devised the ‘730 patent to solve a “collision problem” created by the transmission of slow-varying and fast-varying user input signals to a computer. See Markman Hrg. Tr., 02/24/20, at 6:14-15. Normally, when these slow and fast signals are transmitted together, they collide with one another and corrupt the data. The ‘730 patent purportedly solves this problem through 13, user interface and novel framer that synchronizes the two data streams and encodes them into a combined data stream for transmission to the computer. Id. at 7:14-15. The computer can then receive the combined data stream uncorrupted, which creates the ability to receive the data from multiple input sources, as depicted below:

ay □□□ 14 17 14 4 12 L 46 (8 12

U 10 U 10 FIG. 1A- PRIOR ART FIG. 1B Dkt. #86-1 at 4. Figure 1B illustrates one embodiment of the invention, wherein a UID (11, Fig. 1A) and sound card (15, Fig. 1A) may be substituted with an “inventive apparatus” (18, Fig. 1B) that “singly provides both functions.” Jd. at col. 3, lines 30-41. In other words, the user may

ORDER RE: CLAIM CONSTRUCTION AND GRANTING DEFENDANT’S MOTION FOR SUMMARY JUDGMENT - 3

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Genuine Enabling Technology LLC v. Nintendo Co Ltd, (W.D. Wash. 2020).

Genuine Enabling Technology LLC v. Nintendo Co Ltd (Genuine Enabling Technology LLC v. Nintendo Co Ltd) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Anderson v. Liberty Lobby, Inc.
477 U.S. 242 (Supreme Court, 1986)
O'Melveny & Myers v. Federal Deposit Insurance
512 U.S. 79 (Supreme Court, 1994)
Barnett Bank of Marion County, N. A. v. Nelson
517 U.S. 25 (Supreme Court, 1996)
Tatro v. Kervin
41 F.3d 9 (First Circuit, 1994)
Abbott Laboratories v. Sandoz, Inc.
566 F.3d 1282 (Federal Circuit, 2009)
Andersen Corp. v. Fiber Composites, LLC
474 F.3d 1361 (Federal Circuit, 2007)
Research Plastics, Inc. v. Federal Packaging Corp.
421 F.3d 1290 (Federal Circuit, 2005)
Playtex Products, Inc. v. Procter & Gamble Co.
400 F.3d 901 (Federal Circuit, 2005)
Microsoft Corp. v. i4i Ltd. Partnership
131 S. Ct. 2238 (Supreme Court, 2011)
Michael Canale v. United States
969 F.2d 13 (Second Circuit, 1992)