Nintendo Wins 15-year-old Lawsuit

Drama

18 December 2025 08:58

Nintendo has secured a major legal victory in a long-running patent dispute, winning nearly €7m in damages, interest, and legal fees against third-party Wii controller seller BigBen Interactive, now known as Nacon.

As reported by The Games Fray, Nintendo’s legal team in Germany confirmed that the ruling, finalised at the end of October, orders Nacon to compensate the company for infringing a European patent related to Nintendo’s Wii controller technology.

The case dates back more than 15 years. In 2011, a German court had already ruled that BigBen’s Wii controllers infringed Nintendo’s patent. However, proceedings to determine the financial damages extended for years, a process Nintendo’s lawyers described as highly unusual within German patent law.

According to the ruling, the court accepted Nintendo’s argument that, without BigBen’s infringing products, Nintendo itself would have captured 100% of the sales. BigBen had countered that customers would instead have purchased alternative third-party controllers, but the court rejected this defence, stating those competing products were also “highly likely to infringe the patent-in-suit.”

Nintendo’s legal team called the outcome “remarkable,” noting the rarity of such damage assessments and the court’s firm stance on lost sales. They also pointed to repeated delays during the proceedings, which they attributed to BigBen’s legal tactics.

“The ruling ends first-instance proceedings that dragged on for more than seven years, illustrating the time challenges involved in enforcing claims for damages for patent infringement in Germany,” the lawyers wrote. “BigBen had delayed the proceedings several times, for example, by rejecting the court-appointed expert.

“These delaying tactics have now proved costly: the interest on the claim, amounting to 5 percentage points above the basic rate of interest, has significantly increased BigBen’s payment obligation and accounts for a substantial part of the total claim of just under EUR 7 million.”

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Nintendo Wins 15-year-old Lawsuit

Drama

18 December 2025 08:58

Tags: Nintendo

Nintendo has secured a major legal victory in a long-running patent dispute, winning nearly €7m in damages, interest, and legal fees against third-party Wii controller seller BigBen Interactive, now known as Nacon.

As reported by The Games Fray, Nintendo’s legal team in Germany confirmed that the ruling, finalised at the end of October, orders Nacon to compensate the company for infringing a European patent related to Nintendo’s Wii controller technology.

The case dates back more than 15 years. In 2011, a German court had already ruled that BigBen’s Wii controllers infringed Nintendo’s patent. However, proceedings to determine the financial damages extended for years, a process Nintendo’s lawyers described as highly unusual within German patent law.

According to the ruling, the court accepted Nintendo’s argument that, without BigBen’s infringing products, Nintendo itself would have captured 100% of the sales. BigBen had countered that customers would instead have purchased alternative third-party controllers, but the court rejected this defence, stating those competing products were also “highly likely to infringe the patent-in-suit.”

Nintendo’s legal team called the outcome “remarkable,” noting the rarity of such damage assessments and the court’s firm stance on lost sales. They also pointed to repeated delays during the proceedings, which they attributed to BigBen’s legal tactics.

“The ruling ends first-instance proceedings that dragged on for more than seven years, illustrating the time challenges involved in enforcing claims for damages for patent infringement in Germany,” the lawyers wrote. “BigBen had delayed the proceedings several times, for example, by rejecting the court-appointed expert.

“These delaying tactics have now proved costly: the interest on the claim, amounting to 5 percentage points above the basic rate of interest, has significantly increased BigBen’s payment obligation and accounts for a substantial part of the total claim of just under EUR 7 million.”

More:Tencent Invests in Drama Studios

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