In late January 2021, Judge Thomas Zilly of the Western District of Washington began to hear the case against Valve, brought by plaintiff Ironburg Inventions for infringing their patent on rear-facing buttons on a game controller. The verdict for the case, the first ever patent jury trial to be heard remotely due to coronavirus restrictions, was handed down on February 1.
Despite Valve’s insistence that it had not infringed on any patents or intellectual property, the jury decided otherwise and ordered the company to pay $4 million in damages to Ironburg. The plaintiff’s lawyer, Robert Becker, had argued that Valve’s actions were akin to the Biblical story of David and Goliath. “Goliath does what Goliath wants to do,” he stated.
Back in 2014, a prototype of Valve’s Steam Controller was demonstrated at the Consumer Electronics Show, or CES. The controller featured rear-side controls, and Ironburg Inventions alerted the games industry giant that the feature had already been patented. The patent specifically added two buttons or triggers to the back of a conventional game controller that would be operated by the user’s middle fingers.
Microsoft licensed the patent from Ironburg for use on its Xbox Elite controllers, which debuted for Xbox One consoles and Windows 10 PCs in 2015. Valve, on the other hand, continued with the development of the Steam Controller and launched it in November 2015 without having acquired a license for the rear buttons. The company went on to reportedly sell 1.6 million units before the Steam Controller was discontinued in 2019.
Valve’s lawyer, Trent Webb, maintained that the features of the Steam Controller did not match those outlined in Ironburg’s patent and therefore did not infringe on that company’s design. The plaintiff’s claims would be disproven once jurors saw with their own eyes and felt with their own hands the differences between the Steam Controller and Ironburg’s patent. “Alternative reality has no place here,” said Webb during the trial.
On the contrary, the jurors, who received the Steam Controller by mail, found that Valve’s infringement was willful. Though their award was on the low end of the damages asked for by Ironburg, the jury’s findings raise the possibility of enhancements, which are additional damages awarded for patent infringement at the discretion of the court.
Ironburg Inventions is the IP-holding arm of SCUF Gaming, which builds controllers and other gaming accessories, including custom-designed peripherals for professional console and PC gamers. The features on SCUF’s controllers are covered by 122 patents, with many more pending. Ironburg and SCUF Gaming were acquired by computer peripheral and hardware manufacturer Corsair in December 2019.
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