A lawsuit against Valve began Tuesday, with the company accused of infringing a patent to create their Steam Controller.
The allegations stem from Ironburg Inventions, the IP-based branch of SCUF control maker Law360 reported.
The lawsuit is ongoing on Zoom due to COVID-19 restrictions, with opening arguments seeing Ironburg lawyer Robert Becker explain that Valve was warned in 2014 that the His Steam Controller, just a prototype then, featured the same “back side surface control Ironburg had just patented. “
Valve continued with its prototype however, releasing the Steam Controller in 2015 and selling 1.5 million units from September 2018.
The patent is US Patent No. 8,641,525, recorded in 2011 by Simon Burgess and Ironburg CEO Duncan Ironmonger. Microsoft has since been licensed for the Xbox controller.
The patented controller includes ‘two additional controls (11) positioned on the back in positions operated by a user’s middle fingers’.
“The disregard shown by Valve is broken at the heart of this case,” said Becker at Manatt Phelps & Phillips LLP. it went on to break anyway – the classic story of David and Goliath: Goliath does what Goliath wants to do. “
But Valve’s lawyer, Trent Webb at Shook Hardy & Bacon LLP, argued that the features of the administrator under review did not match the definition of the Ironburg patents.
“Nothing you see or hear from Ironburg will change what you see with your own eyes and feel with your own hands when you get that Steam Controller,” Webb said, as all eight jurors will be sent to the administrator. “Other truth has no place here.”
The Steam Controller was discontinued in November 2019.