Nintendo came out on top and won a 15-year-old lawsuit against BigBen Interactive over the Wii controller patent. In June 2010, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in Germany against accessory manufacturer BigBen Interactive, now known as Nacon, alleging that certain Wii controllers sold by the company infringed a European patent that covered key aspects of Nintendo's Wii Remote technology. The patent included ergonomic design elements and sensor technologies that were unique to the Wii controller ecosystem.
In its complaint, Nintendo alleged that BigBen's third-party Wiimotes were using patented technology without permission, effectively draining profits from official Nintendo hardware. Defendant BigBen countered that if consumers did not buy its drivers, they would just buy them from some other third party. This argument was intended to reduce Nintendo's claimed damages by arguing that even without BigBen, purchases would not necessarily flow back to Nintendo. Before the recent ruling, several judgments had already appeared in the case. In July 2011, it was ruled that BigBen was indeed guilty of infringement, and subsequent appeals over the years have upheld those findings.
In the midst of the Palworld lawsuit, Nintendo patents a character summoning system
As the Palworld lawsuit continues, Nintendo is securing another broad patent that one expert says poses a threat to the entire video game industry.
Nintendo waited 15 years to win the lawsuit
On October 30, 2025, after 15 years of legal proceedings, the Mannheim Regional Court awarded Nintendo “just under €7 million” or US$8.2 million in total damages. This figure includes nearly €3 million in interest that has accrued since 2018 and legal costs. The decision calculated damages based on a theory of lost profits, which assumed that Nintendo would have captured all sales of BigBen controllers had there been no infringement. The court sided with this position after rejecting the defendant's argument that consumers would simply buy other third-party products instead.
…Hypothetical mitigating circumstances, which would amount to actions of third parties that also cause damage, cannot be taken into account in favor of the infringer. – Bardehle Pagenberg law firm
The ruling marks a significant legal win for Nintendo, but it's not necessarily the final chapter. BigBen reserves the right to appeal, and according to Nintendo's German legal team, the defendant has already begun pursuing such a move. This means that the final financial and legal closure of this particular dispute is still ongoing.
Nintendo has long maintained a reputation as a rather contentious company that staunchly defends its patents and intellectual property. This 15-year battle is just one example. One of the most recent known cases is a patent infringement lawsuit Nintendo filed against developer Pocketpair in September 2024. Nintendo has joined The Pokemon Company in claiming that many game mechanics in Palworldfrom census creatures to throwable Pal Spheres to creature riding and traversal systems that closely mimic Pokemon-style interactions.
Nintendo is seeking an injunction to force the changes Palworldmechanics and roughly $65,000 in damages. Pocketpair refuted this claim on several fronts, insisting that the systems in question are original or existed in other pre-Nintendo games. However, the developer has made repeated changes Palworldsuch as adjusting the gliding mechanics and removing the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres, at least temporarily. The trial experienced several hiccups, including the rejection of Nintendo's patent by the Japan Patent Office in October 2025, with the examiner citing several other games that used similar systems and stating that the company's supposed inventions were not novel enough.
The Japanese video game giant also won another patent infringement lawsuit in Washington state in September 2025, this time against Ryan Daly, the operator of moddedhardware.com, which no longer exists. The lawsuit alleged that Daly knowingly sold devices designed to bypass Switch DRM while also copying and selling pirated Nintendo games. After the modder represented himself in court, the two sides reached an agreement that Daly would pay Nintendo $2 million.
Source: Bardehle Pagenberg
