Valve catches a break in the Steam Controller patent trial versus Ironburg

In the ongoing saga between Ironburg Inventions and Valve, a new ruling appeared on August 17 that gives Valve another chance to invalidate some parts of the patents involved.

The case against Valve boils down to the back paddles included on the Steam Controller, which Ironburg have repeatedly claimed infringes on their patents. Initially, the courts backed Ironburg and awarded at least $4 million in damages, which was upheld in later ruling against Valve.

Now though another ruling has appeared after an appeal which actually backs Valve. The interesting part here is that one piece of the evidence from Valve during the trial was on some prior art that should have invalidated parts of the patents from Ironburg.

It involves an article on xboxer360.com (which no longer exists) that you can see using the Wayback Machine showing a controller with buttons on the back being reviewed in 2010 (keep in mind the patent Ironburg were granted is from 2013). Valve showed copies as evidence, but this was ignored in previous rulings. The things is, this same article was even used by Ironburg in their patent application shown at the bottom under "Other references".

While you might not be able to normally view the article now, it still existed. For it to be taken into account as prior art it had to be "sufficiently accessible to the public interested in the art" and of course it was. The ruling even notes that references to it were found by a patent examiner by doing a "brief" search on it.

The finding then is that this makes there be "overwhelming evidence" of prior art, which is something that was basically ignored in previous rulings because dates didn't line up so it had "not been authenticated". We're now waiting for the next part, as it has been remanded so it's getting a reconsideration.