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Judge Rakoff Sets Royalty Rate For Nintendo 3DS Technology at 1.82% per unit

Tripon

Member
Law360, Los Angeles (December 11, 2013, 7:49 PM ET) -- U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff on Wednesday set the royalty percentage Nintendo Co. Ltd. owes Tomita Technologies International Ltd. for using Tomita’s patented camera technology in its 3DS gaming system, ruling a flat amount per device would be an “unearned windfall” for Tomita as prices decline.

The New York federal judge found that it was highly likely that prices of the 3DS handheld console would fall over time as the technology behind the device becomes cheaper. The decision follows Judge Rakoff’s August ruling that a jury awarding Tomita $30.2 million for the infringement had gone overboard and taken improper factors into account, cutting the award in half to $15.1 million.

“If, as Tomita suggests, the ongoing royalty rate were expressed as a flat dollar amount per unit sold, Tomita would capture an increasingly large proportion of each sale as the price falls, even as the technology's reliance on the infringed patent remains constant,” Judge Rakoff wrote. “This would result in an unearned windfall for Tomita, and, accordingly, the court prefers an ongoing royalty rate expressed as a percentage of wholesale price.”

Nintendo must pay Tomita 1.82 percent of the wholesale price of each 3DS sold, according to the ruling. That percentage is one-third more than the implied royalty rate of the jury’s halved award. The increase over the jury’s implied rate was justified, Judge Rakoff said, because the result of hypothetical negotiations between parties is changed after findings of infringement.

Nintendo had requested to pay the implied royalty rate of the jury’s halved award, or 1.36 percent of the wholesale price, while Tomita had asked to use the implied rate of the jury’s initial award expressed as a dollar figure, or $4.45 per device.

The decision also ordered Nintendo to pay $241,231 in supplemental damages and prejudgment interest.

http://www.law360.com/articles/495175/rakoff-sets-royalty-rate-for-nintendo-3ds-technology

Searched, didn't find an article, file a patent infringement against me if old.

Edit: Found an article that summed up the issue pretty well.

The remaining damages issue, decided here, was whether to award an ongoing royalty rate to be paid for future sales, and if so, what it should be. The court set the ongoing royalty rate at 1.82% of wholesale sales—two-thirds of the 2.73% of sales that the jury’s original damages award reflected. The 1.82% was based on the court’s earlier determination that there was no basis to completely reject the jury’s award, even though the full award was intrinsically excessive. The court awarded the royalty based on a percentage of sales, as opposed to a fixed dollar amount per unit sold, and reasoned that a percentage was appropriate to avoid unearned windfalls from price fluctuations. It also based the royalty on a percentage of wholesale sales, which it deemed appropriate because of rapid technology advancement and its effect on prices.

http://www.nypatentblog.com/tag/royalty-rate/
 

Dirk Benedict

Gold Member
Quick maths and probably not even accurate. But Tomita gets around 3 bucks and some change for each 3ds sold? Some are 169.99 while the XL is 199.99

Correct if wrong.
 

Tripon

Member
That's quite high. What camera technology are we talking about, exactly?

The 3D tech, I'm assuming. Tomita was an old Sony engineer that quit to try to make money on 3D, and had a meeting with Nintendo about it. I don't think they took him up on his offer, and when Nintendo did 3D anyway, Tomita sued.

I personally don't think Nintendo actually infringed on whatever Tomita really had, but hey, he was able to win his lawsuit.
 
Cha-Ching.
Ehm..
Legale se is not actually my field, but..
http://www.m-cam.com/sites/www.m-cam.com/files/20110712%20-%20Tomita%20v%20Nintendo.pdf
Apparently tomita patent was predated by another papering really similar concepts..
So..
Guy1 put an ip claim on something..
Guy2 put an ip claim on something..
Guy2 propose his concept to nintendo and nintendo rejects it..
Nintendo later reuse the concept WITHOUT any blue print or documentati on from guy2 (else guy2 is stupid and nintendo a fraud) and nintendo is used and has lost?
Amaerica's Laws regarding is made of Scum&scam...
 

Xenus

Member
The 3D tech, I'm assuming. Tomita was an old Sony engineer that quit to try to make money on 3D, and had a meeting with Nintendo about it. I don't think they took him up on his offer, and when Nintendo did 3D anyway, Tomita sued.

I personally don't think Nintendo actually infringed on whatever Tomita really had, but hey, he was able to win his lawsuit.

It's practically a text book example of how to get sued for your ass and lose. You don't ever bring in a guy have him show you his tech and turn him down and make something a dirivative of that tech without paying the original presentor.

This is exactly why companies tend to not even have their tech groups look for patents on the idea becuase the very act of reading it could cause you to use an idea from it without thinking about it.
 

BlackJace

Member
Ehm..
Legale se is not actually my field, but..
http://www.m-cam.com/sites/www.m-cam.com/files/20110712%20-%20Tomita%20v%20Nintendo.pdf
Apparently tomita patent was predated by another papering really similar concepts..
So..
Guy1 put an ip claim on something..
Guy2 put an ip claim on something..
Guy2 propose his concept to nintendo and nintendo rejects it..
Nintendo later reuse the concept WITHOUT any blue print or documentati on from guy2 (else guy2 is stupid and nintendo a fraud) and nintendo is used and has lost?
Amaerica's Laws regarding is made of Scum&scam...

I'm not exactly sure what your trying to say. Regardless of the integrity of the lawsuit, Tomita still sees quite a bit of money from this victory, right?
 

NateDrake

Member
Wasn't the original lawsuit more about the 3DS' 3D Slider and AR Games as the main patent offenders than a glasses-free 3D screen?
 

hongcha

Member
At least nintendo doesn't have to pay this for the 2ds' that are sold, right? Maybe this is one of the reasons why they released a 2ds in the first place.
 

Damaniel

Banned
Quick maths and probably not even accurate. But Tomita gets around 3 bucks and some change for each 3ds sold? Some are 169.99 while the XL is 199.99

Correct if wrong.

Probably a little less, since the royalty rate is based on the wholesale price, not the retail. They'll still get over $2 for every 3DS sold.
 
I'm not exactly sure what your trying to say. Regardless of the integrity of the lawsuit, Tomita still sees quite a bit of money from this victory, right?
From my pov if this tomita guy presented an idea WITHOUT even leaving blue print or technical documentatiion, EVEN admiting that used his idea to built the core of 3ds camera...
Well from my pov it should be void..
If i descrive a technical solution but apart from my word i don't leaves nothing, anyone can replicate it ignoring any patent i FILLED..
From my pov patent on an idea are preposte focus.. You can patent a technical implementati on of said idea, patenting an idea is like talking about the sex of angels...
So EVEN IF nintendo started the whole concept based on tomita idea, and i expect that tomita after the refusal didn't leave any documentatiion or blue print to ninty, for me this is just a bogus Charge...
But nowdays patenting ideas has gone so over board that w/e
 

Zee-Row

Banned
The camera on the 3DS and the Vita suck complete ass. I wonder who actually takes photos with them? The quality is like a potato.
 
You'd do the same if Nintendo infringed on your patent.
Imagine you have an idea..
You just have that and a proto type..
You go to a company and present that idea..
The company refuses...
And start doing that very same thing you presented but their implementati on of the tech is different, after all they don't have the blue print of your prototipe not the documentation...
You sue them after they have made billions..
I call that patent trolling :)

Patent infringment is when i implement something based on a tech and someone realize something using an implementatiion Almost identical to mine..
Imho
 

jcracken

Banned
From my pov if this tomita guy presented an idea WITHOUT even leaving blue print or technical documentatiion, EVEN admiting that used his idea to built the core of 3ds camera...
Well from my pov it should be void..
If i descrive a technical solution but apart from my word i don't leaves nothing, anyone can replicate it ignoring any patent i FILLED..
From my pov patent on an idea are preposte focus.. You can patent a technical implementati on of said idea, patenting an idea is like talking about the sex of angels...
So EVEN IF nintendo started the whole concept based on tomita idea, and i expect that tomita after the refusal didn't leave any documentatiion or blue print to ninty, for me this is just a bogus Charge...
But nowdays patenting ideas has gone so over board that w/e

Say you create a new type of potato peeler. You go to a kitchen utensil company and show off your invention. You don't give them blueprints or tell them how it works specifically, but you might say vaguely, it goes left to right and uses x blade, etc, etc. If they say no, they have no right to make a potato peeler that uses the same mechanism as yours. If they go ahead and do that, though, then you are allowed to sue.

Plus your second point is ridiculous. Mr. Tomita probably did patent a technical implementation of that idea, it's not like you propose something to a major company based off of vague ideas.
 

Mr-Joker

Banned
CI16_PickaColour_image600w.png


Just try getting royalty from these.
 
Say you create a new type of potato peeler. You go to a kitchen utensil company and show off your invention. You don't give them blueprints or tell them how it works specifically, but you might say vaguely, it goes left to right and uses x blade, etc, etc. If they say no, they have no right to make a potato peeler that uses the same mechanism as yours. If they go ahead and do that, though, then you are allowed to sue.

Plus your second point is ridiculous. Mr. Tomita probably did patent a technical implementation of that idea, it's not like you propose something to a major company based off of vague ideas.
Did they have access to his model and ripper it out open and replicate the idea based on that?
If they did, it's copying, if they instead had tomita exp laminino his idea and showing his prototype and then they built from scratches without having access to the prototype i call that talking inspiration, and that doesn't i cringe any copy..
If tomita was sorride eh could have asked to ninty to sign a nda deal with some additional classe (can't use this concept for 5 years in individuali project even if no deal is met after the presentation)..
He didn't most likely..

I repeat..
A copy is a copy that wants to be equal to the original..
An imitation is the original plus other thing to obfuscate the original source
An inspiration is when you just glimpse and starting from that glimpse you produce your own

And in my case this is the third case, while of course without access to material evidente, this is just pure speculation
 
Im just jealous of this guy.

Brb gonna go buy some extremely hot coffee from Mcdonalds.

For the record, that hot coffee lawsuit was legit. There was no reason for the coffee to be so scalding hot. It was far, far beyond what it should have been heated thus causing much more significant of a burn than if it were heated to an appropriate level.

Also, the woman started by only asking for McD to cover her medical bills (less than $20,000) but they refused several times. That's when they were taken to and eventually lost in court.
 

10k

Banned
Quick maths and probably not even accurate. But Tomita gets around 3 bucks and some change for each 3ds sold? Some are 169.99 while the XL is 199.99

Correct if wrong.
Those are retail prices not wholesale. Probably 1.75 or something each unit. Still great.
 

RandSec

Neo Member
I repeat..
A copy is a copy that wants to be equal to the original..
An imitation is the original plus other thing to obfuscate the original source
An inspiration is when you just glimpse and starting from that glimpse you produce your own

If we are talking about an issued patent, it really does not matter how the infringement came to be. Even if you came up with the product completely independently, you still infringe.
 
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