GabeN takes a hit to his stats before his prophesied battle with John Carmack.
February saw Valve losing the suit filed against the by SCUF Gaming’s parent company, Ironburg Inventions, and ordered by the court to pay $4 million to said company. The suit was over the back paddle buttons on the Steam controller. Following this, Valve, of course, filed a motion requesting either a judgment as a matter of law, or a new trial, as they considered the jury’s findings and damage awards to be “unsupported by the evidence.”
The judge, in turn, has disagreed, claiming that sufficient evidence was presented, and that the whole process was in fact quite straightforward. The ruling:
“In his opening statement, counsel for [Valve] told the jury that ‘this is about as straightforward a patent case as you could ever hope to get because every decision that you will have to make in this trial you can make with just two pieces of evidence’,” the ruling says. “[Valve’s] lawyer asked the jury to ‘focus on those two pieces of essential evidence,’ which would ‘be at the heart of this entire trial,’ and he indicated that, if the jury did so and based its decision ‘on reality,’ it would have no trouble making the right decision at the end of this case.”
“The Court agrees that this case is straightforward and can be decided on the ’525 Patent and the accused device. The jury appears to have done exactly that, but defendant does not like the result the jury reached. Defendant’s dissatisfaction does not constitute grounds for judgment as a matter of law or a new trial.”
That said, it’s not exactly doom and gloom for Valve, here. The judge also declined Ironburg’s motion for enhanced damages, which could’ve easily seen that $4million balloon up to $12 million. Moreover, the infringement Valve has to pay for is considered the “garden variety” rather than something more serious like “piracy” of an invention, so punitive damages are off the table.
Valve canstill appeal the finding. However, in an interview with The Esports Observer, Darius Gambino, an intellectual property attorney at law firm Saul Ewing Arnstein & Lehr LLP, believes it unlikely. Rather, he thinks they’ll see the ruling against enhanced damages as a win and move on, since they’re not even selling the controller anymore.
They have been litigating this case for a long time. Valve is not making the controller anymore. I don’t think that the denial of the willful infringement damages on behalf of SCUF is something that they would probably want to appeal. Just from reading Judge Zilly’s order, I don’t know that there will be an appeal. Valve may just pay the $4M and be done with it since it’s not an ongoing product that they’re continuing to generate sales from.
Darius Gambino
Source: PC Gamer
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