(Wii Games Magazine) Nintendo has won a patent infringement lawsuit that was filed against the company six months ago alleging that the Wii infringed on a patent by Guardian Media Technologies that deals with parental controls. In mid-June, U.S. District Court Judge Manuel Real entered an order granting Nintendo’s motion for summary judgment of non-infringement on June 8, 2009.
“We are very pleased with the Court’s decision,” said Rick Flamm, Nintendo of America’s senior vice president of Legal and general counsel. “Nintendo vigorously defends patent lawsuits. At the earliest stages of this case, Nintendo convinced the Court to dismiss this case as Guardian’s patent had nothing to do with Nintendo’s products.”
Here’s the abstract from the original patent (#4,930,158) that Guardian alleged the Wii infringed on:
“A classification code, recorded repeatedly along with program material, is recovered on playing a video recording, and used to inhibit replay if the recovered code matches any of a set of codes specified by the user. The codes which cause replay to be inhibited can be set by the user after entering a personal identity number. The user can optionally request that a code be recorded when recording a program. Signals are optionally provided so that an auxiliary device, such as a second video player, can be controlled in response to codes recovered. One application is to prevent children viewing certain video recordings without parental permission.”
