Alex Calvin, Wednesday, February 3, 2021, GMT
Corsair’s Scuf Game Company claimed that the paddles of the gamepad violated its patent.
Valve fined $4 million for alleged patent infringement Steam controller.
As Law360 reported, Corsair’s Scuf Gaming and its IP-owned Ironburg invention brought Valve to court, the latter claiming that the gamepad infringed the Steam controller’s patent on the backplane. This is a patent jointly used by Microsoft and Ironburg for its own Xbox Elite controller. The company took Valve to court in 2015.
The jury found that Valve infringed on all seven of Ironburg’s claims and imposed a fine of $4 million on the company. Scuf actually requested a maximum compensation of 11 million U.S. dollars, or 6 million U.S. dollars, which is consistent with the fees Microsoft paid for licensing the patent.
In fact, because the jury stated that they believed Valve’s patent infringement was intentional, the fine may increase.
Iron Castle lawyer Robert Becker told the jury: “Valve’s deliberate ignorance of its infringement is the core of this case.”
“Valve does know that its actions involve unreasonable risks of infringement, but in any case it just continues to infringe-the classic story of David and Goliath: Goliath did what Goliath wanted to do.”
Valve launched the Steam Controller in 2015 and discontinued the game controller in 2019. The company was unable to maintain demand until the game controller was discontinued.
Not long ago, Valve was fined 1.6 million dollars by the European Commission for geo-blocking the Steam key. This is the news.
