Week 7: Nintendo vs UltimatePointer Claim Analysis

Last week, I discussed a case between Nintendo and UltimatePointer and this week, I am going to give a more in-depth analysis of one of the claims in the patent owned by UltimatePointer.

Quick Summary of the case: A patent troll company called UltimatePointer, LLC claimed that Nintendo’s motion-controlled Wii hardware infringed on its patents. However, on March 1, 2016, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals found that Nintendo’s Wii console does not infringe patents asserted by UltimatePointer. The patent that I am going to discuss is as follows-

Patent Number 8,049,729: Provides a method for controlling movement of a computer display cursor based on a point-of-aim of a pointing device within an interaction region includes projecting an image of a computer display to create the interaction region. 

Claim 1: 

CLAIM COMPONENT	ANALYSIS
An apparatus for controlling a feature on a computer generated image, the apparatus comprising:	The method requires a physical equipment to control an aspect on a computer generated image (for example, a video game), which means that if the image is not computer generated (for example, drawn with a chalk on board) then the claim doesn’t hold
A handheld device including**	Thus, if the device is to be “held”, so if it’s a wristband or an anklet, then this does not hold.
an image sensor, said image sensor generating data related to the distance between a first point and a second point, the first point having a predetermined relation to the computer generated image and the second point having a predetermined relation to a handheld enclosure; and	This handheld device must have an image sensor that helps determine the distance between the first point (from computer generated image) and second point (from the handheld device)**
a processor coupled to said handheld device to receive said generated data related to the distance between a first point and a second point and programmed to use the distance between the first point and the second point to control the feature on the image.	The handheld device is a machine with an image sensor AND a processer, which is used to receive the aforementioned generated data, and it is through this distance that the device is programmed to control the aforementioned feature on the image (for example, movement of hand on video game).

**Although there were several bases for the district court’s decision, the primary basis was that the Wii remote was not a “handheld device,” as the term had been construed by the Texas court. The Washington court began by noting that, under the Texas court’s construction, the claims required a “‘direct,’ as opposed to an ‘indirect,’ pointing device,” id., which the court characterized as “a product that places the cursor on the screen at the physical point of aim,” id. at *2. The Washington court concluded that UltimatePointer had not put forth sufficient evidence to survive summary judgment because the Wii remote was an indirect pointing device, not a direct one. Id. at *1–2. Specifically, the Washington court determined that although the Wii system can give the impression that the cursor is placed as a result of the user’s aim, “in reality it is the remote’s interaction with the Wii sensor bar, not the screen, that is relevant to the placement of the cursor.” Id. at *2.