Nintendo Finally Wins Wii Lawsuit
Nintendo has come out on top, winning a 15-year-old lawsuit against BigBen Interactive over a Wii controller patent. Back in June 2010, Nintendo filed a lawsuit in Germany against third-party accessory maker BigBen Interactive, now known as Nacon, alleging that certain Wii controllers sold by the company violated a European patent that covered key aspects of Nintendo’s Wii Remote tech. The patent included ergonomic design elements and sensor technologies that were inherent to the Wii controller ecosystem.
In its complaint, Nintendo argued that BigBen’s third-party Wiimotes used patented technology without permission, effectively siphoning profits from official Nintendo hardware. The defendant, BigBen, countered that if consumers hadn’t purchased its controllers, they would have just bought them from some other third-party company. This argument aimed to reduce Nintendo’s claimed damages by asserting that, even without BigBen, purchases wouldn’t have necessarily flowed back to Nintendo. Before the recent judgment, the case had already seen a few rulings. In July 2011, a decision found that BigBen was indeed guilty of infringement, and subsequent appeals over the years upheld these findings.
Amid Palworld Lawsuit, Nintendo Patents a System for Summoning a Character
As the Palworld lawsuit continues, Nintendo secures another broad patent that one expert says poses a threat to the entire video games industry.
Nintendo Waited 15 Years for Its Lawsuit Victory
On October 30, 2025, after 15 years of legal proceedings, Mannheim Regional Court awarded Nintendo “just under EUR 7 million,” or $8.2 million USD, in total damages. This number includes nearly 3 million euros of interest that had accrued since 2018 and legal costs. The ruling calculated damages under a lost-profits theory, which presumed that Nintendo would have captured all of BigBen’s controller sales if it weren’t for the infringement. The court favored this position after dismissing the defendant’s argument that consumers would have simply purchased other third-party products instead.
…Hypothetical mitigating circumstances that would have amounted to third-party activities that also trigger damages could not be taken into account in favor of the infringer. – Bardehle Pagenberg law firm
This decision marks a significant legal win for Nintendo, but it isn’t necessarily the final chapter. BigBen retains the right to appeal, and according to Nintendo’s German legal team, the defendant has already begun pursuing such a move. That means the ultimate financial and legal closure of this particular dispute still remains in flux.
Nintendo has long held the reputation of being a rather litigious company, firmly defending its patents and intellectual properties. This 15-year-long battle is just one example of that. One of the most recently known instances of this is the patent infringement lawsuit that Nintendo filed against developer Pocketpair in September 2024. Joined by The Pokemon Company, Nintendo alleges that many of the game mechanics in Palworld, from summing creatures to throwable Pal Spheres to creature riding and traversal systems, closely mimic Pokemon-style interactions.
Nintendo is seeking an injunction to force changes to Palworld’s mechanics and roughly $65,000 USD in damages. Pocketpair has rebutted the claim on multiple fronts, insisting that the disputed systems are original or existed in other games pre-Nintendo. Nevertheless, the developer has made iterative changes to Palworld, such as adjusting the gliding mechanic and removing the ability to summon Pals by throwing Pal Spheres, at least temporarily. The lawsuit has experienced a couple of hiccups, including a rejection of a Nintendo patent by the Japan Patent Office in October 2025, with the examiner listing several other games that used similar systems and stating that the company’s supposed inventions were not sufficiently novel.
The Japanese video game giant also won another patent infringement lawsuit in Washington state in September 2025, this time against Ryan Daly, the operator of the website moddedhardware.com, which no longer exists. The lawsuit claimed that Daly knowingly sold devices that were intended to circumvent Switch DRM, while also copying and selling pirated Nintendo games. After the modder represented himself in court, the two parties came to a settlement that Daly would pay Nintendo $2 million USD.
Source: Bardehle Pagenberg