Judge rules in favor of Sony in $500 million controller lawsuit

A US District Court judge ruled in favor of Sony in a $500 million lawsuit alleging that the company infringed on Genuine Enabling Technology's (GET) patents with its controller technology.

The details:

• GET filed the lawsuit against Sony in 2017 and sought $500 million in damages. The company claimed that PlayStation controllers used a "slow-varying" frequency to communicate button inputs to consoles and higher frequency signals for motion controls and that both signals could not be received simultaneously until its solution was outlined in the '730 Patent.

• Sony responded by claiming that GET had not provided sufficient evidence that the internal component in question was "structurally equivalent" to the diagrams in the patent.

• The court has now ruled in favor of Sony (via GamesIndustry.biz), stating that GET "failed to raise a dispute of fact" and that no infringement had occurred, thereby settling the case. GET is still involved in a similar lawsuit with Nintendo over the same patented technology, which was initially ruled in favor of Nintendo in 2020 but was reversed in 2022, with the case still ongoing.

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• Smilegate Barcelona has reportedly closed its doors and laid off all of its employees, just four years after it opened.