Back in February 2021 we wrote an article about how Ironburg Inventions (a subsidiary of Corsair Gaming) were suing Valve for the Steam Controller and Valve has now firmly lost the case. As a brief reminder to save clicking around: Ironburg hold a patent on a controller with two buttons on the back, they sued Valve since the Steam Controller has back paddles.
In the new ruling that can be seen here, Judge Thomas S. Zilly has denied Valve's attempt to have a new trial and overturn the initial jury decision of $4,029,533.93 in damages. Overall it didn't go too well with Valve's defence stating how it was "about as straightforward a patent case as you could ever hope to get" and that the jury would have "no trouble making the right decision at the end of this case" based on the Steam Controller and the Patent. Zilly mentioned "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." — ouch.
Not ideal for Valve, however, the judge also decided that Valve's infringement wasn't enough to award enhanced damages which could have been a real disaster. For Valve though, is four million dollars a lot? They print money thanks to Steam, so not likely. Since Valve no longer produce the Steam Controller, cutting their losses here is probably a good idea.
As it turns out, the previous hints of a new Steam Controller that might have come with four back-buttons appears to not be happening either. In the court documents we can see developers from Valve clearly mention the four-button approach did not survive their original iterative design process after many tests. Shame. I absolutely loved the Steam Controller, so a new version that got around the patent issues with a tweaked design would have been ideal. Well, at least we shall have the upcoming SteamPal console perhaps.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Oh wait.
* It's a new thing (no prior art)No, those three conditions are pretty much universal in patent law. The trouble is that there are so many submissions that patent registrars are just that: people who register. They don't check whether the submission meets the requirements or not, leaving that to any future lawsuit. Of course, defendants in a suit will point to the fact that the patent was awarded several years ago with no objections from anyone else...
* It has industrial use (can be manufactured or used in the industry)
* It's actually an inventive and original thing. It must not be obvious to someone working in the field.
I'm a bit circumspect regarding the last one. Maybe that condition just isn't there in the U.S? It might be hard to prove in any case.
hardpenguin Jun 2, 2021
Mohandevir Jun 2, 2021
Last edited by Mohandevir on 2 June 2021 at 5:23 pm UTC
Comandante Ñoñardo Jun 2, 2021
I read up on this some more, and it seems there were some patents that became invalidated, but not this one. Valve (or at least the project leader) was aware of it late in the development cycle, pretty much when the controller was customer ready, and "were too invested" (didn't want refresh the design that late in the game) and basically thought they could just talk their way out of any problems.They probably would have lost a lot more than 4 mil going back to the drawing board at that point. So, well, cost of doing business I guess. I'd probably have decided the same. Unless for some bizarre reason I respected patent law enough to want to not violate it on principle . . . but that's a nope.
So I'll reiterate what I said the last time: the patent is stupid in my opinion, but Valve deserve to be slapped for knowingly, willfully, ignoring it. It's not up Valve to decide the validity of the patent.
slaapliedje Jun 3, 2021
For the most part, if you are a company and DON'T patent things, you'll basically come up against someone who DID and the worse part is, a patent doesn't even require a working prototype. You can basically just show a schematic of how it would/should work. Pay the patent fees, and you're good. Then you just wait until some big company tries to do something similar, and sue. Cool, easy 4 million dollars.Do you paladins really think Valve owns no patents?
Nobody here (afaik) is paladining for Valve. They're blackguarding against this horrid patent.
And I agree with them.
So at this stage because of how broken it is (not requiring a working prototype, fee based, etc) then a company would simply be incompetent if it didn't file for patents for everything it possibly could.
The crap thing is, that means your inventor that comes up with a brilliant plan in their garage is more likely to get screwed out of it and still live the rest of their lives poor while their invention is sold to millions. This is because most of the time they'll try to take it to some company, and the company is likely to just say 'we'll that's neat, but we're not interested in it at this time.' Then maybe a year or 5 later will release something based on that idea.
And since there is a non-insignificant cost associated with filing a patent, getting one without corporate backing or financial risk (as you could apply and still be denied), it really does screw out the 'little guy'.
slaapliedje Jun 4, 2021
I have 3 Steam Controller and I should say it's an awesome piece of hardware, I hope Valve will keep supporting it to work with Steam.Same here. The nicest support is when they properly support the Steam Input API. Then it should detect which controller you have, and map the in-game button graphics to correspond to it! One of the most annoying things I encounter in games these days is that they standardize on the Xbox button layout, even if you're using a playstation controller. Not enough developers utilize that though.. :(
That really winds me up. Games generally have a PlayStation port; they've got the assets already, and the means to choose which to display. But... they don't.I have 3 Steam Controller and I should say it's an awesome piece of hardware, I hope Valve will keep supporting it to work with Steam.Same here. The nicest support is when they properly support the Steam Input API. Then it should detect which controller you have, and map the in-game button graphics to correspond to it! One of the most annoying things I encounter in games these days is that they standardize on the Xbox button layout, even if you're using a playstation controller. Not enough developers utilize that though.. :(
InhaleOblivion Jun 6, 2021
Patreon
PayPal
See more from me