A $500 million lawsuit filed against Sony seven years ago has been settled, but since the judge ruled in Sony’s favor, they won’t have to pay out huge sums.

According to the ruling, the communication between Sony’s controller and its console does not violate any technology patent. It’s a patent infringement lawsuit, and it was filed against Sony by GET (Genuine Enabling Technology) in 2017, claiming that the company was infringing on its patent by the way it connected controllers and consoles. A console generation has passed since then, and according to Gamesindustry, a US district court ruled in Sony’s favor, with the judge saying there was no patent infringement.

One of the main objections in GET’s lawsuit was that PlayStation consoles and controllers send a “slowly varying” frequency signal for button input and a higher frequency signal for motion control. GET believed that no device would be able to receive both signals at the same time until the company’s patent solved this problem. Sony argued that GET had failed to prove that any particular part of the controllers was “structurally equivalent” to the schemes in the company’s patent.

The judge agreed with this reasoning, finding that GET had failed to prove its factual allegation and therefore ruling in Sony’s favor as not infringing GET’s patents, and the case is closed. Meanwhile, GET can try another company, as there is a similar case against Nintendo, but there was already a ruling against GET (i.e. the big N won), but the year before last the US Court of Appeals overturned the decision and the case is still pending.

So GET is trying to make money off the gaming industry, but so far it hasn’t had much success. It will probably appeal the decision to get a small bag of money out of Sony…

Source: VGC, Gamesindustry