Given how busy (and frequently successful) they’ve been over the years, it’s hard not to imagine Nintendo’s legal department as a razor-sharp, iron-sinewed, crack military team of litigation commandos. Kind of like a pumped-up Elite Beat Agents, only trained in the law rather than dance.
Well they’re going to be out in force again soon it seems, as Nintendo is being sued once more. This time the complaint is coming from Texas-based Lonestar Inventions, over a 1993 design for a triply-effective capacitor design which it claims Nintendo stole for its hardware products. Confusingly, the company didn’t contact Nintendo before filing the suit and hasn’t clarified which Nintendo products are specifically at issue, although its lawyer states that the Wii is at the heart of the problem.
However, the company has a history of litigation over the technology, having already won licensing agreements from Texas Instruments and Broadcom Corp., with lawsuits against Eastman Kodak and Freescale Semiconductor Inc. currently in the works. Lonestar’s offices also happen to be located in a Texas law firm. Make of that what you will.
At the moment, Nintendo is refusing to make a comment until the products and components in question are clarified. Given the fact that we have a suit with a history of success going up against Nintendo’s hungry-dog-with-a-bone approach to legal entanglements, expect this one to go on for a while.
[Via Lloyds]
