Philips VS Nintendo round two. And it's not good...

[Kyanbu The Legend]

http://www.screwattack.com/news/phil...ainst-nintendo

As reported by Bloomberg, economic giant of The Netherlands and tech industry leader (and maker of the flop CD-i console) Philips, has won one of its four patent lawsuits against Nintendo.

The U.K. High Court has ruled that "The Big N's" Wii U console (and to a lesser extent, the original Wii) infringes on two Philips patents regarding motion sensing technology. Because of this, Nintendo is due to pay Philips an undisclosed (although likely exceedingly large) cash settlement.

Luckily for "The Big N," judge Colin Birss ruled Nintendo did not infringe upon a third Philips patent pertaining to the modeling of a body in a virtual environment. So that will soften the financial blow a little bit.

In an official statement sent out to members of the press, Nintendo made it quite clear that it plans to file an appeal to this ruling, so the U.K. chapter of the Nintendo/Philips legal battle isn't quite over yet.

“Nintendo has a long history of developing innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. Nintendo is committed to ensuring that this judgment does not affect continued sales of its highly acclaimed line of video game hardware, software and accessories and will actively pursue all such legitimate steps as are necessary to avoid any interruptions to its business.”
This whole mess began in 2011 when Philips alerted Nintendo that its hardware infringed on three Philips patents. After failing to settle things outside of the courtroom, Philips launched four separate lawsuits against Nintendo. One in the U.K., in Germany, one in France, and as we've previously reported, one in the United States.

After this current ruling, I'm sure even more eyes will be on the U.S. patent case, since if Nintendo loses that one, Philips will be given the legal authority to block all Wii U sales in the country...and since America is the biggest console market in the world, that would be a devastating blow to "The Big N."

So if the U.K. court appeal fails, I think there will be a good chance that Nintendo will be willing to offer some sort of royalties settlement out of court.

We'll have more on this story as it develops.

Geeze Nintendo just cannot catch a break. And if this goes south, it'll be very bad news for Nintendo fans in the states.