The U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C. has sided with Nintendo in a patent lawsuit filed by Motiva LLC in 2008 alleging that the Wii console infringed on technology that facilitated "a system to track player position and movement." In its ruling the court gave the plaintiff a scathing rebuke while rejecting its appeal, noting that litigation was "Motiva's only activity that could be related to commercializing the technology."

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking the Internet community to let their elected representatives in Washington D.C. know that they support H.R. 845, better known as the SHIELD Act (check it out here (PDF)). What is the SHIELD Act? "SHIELD" stands for "Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes."

At a hearing yesterday US District Judge Lucy Koh told Apple and Samsung that both sides need to limit their cases to 25 patent claims each, and no more than 25 allegedly infringing products could be listed. Judge Koh threatened to put the whole case on hold unless both sides narrow the case down and accused them of overbroad accusations.

"As this case as it is currently framed, I'm refusing to go forward," Koh said.

Just take your best shots," Koh said. "I don't want a lot of sausage filler."

Not even a year into its life, the Super Podcast Action Committee may be coming to a bitter end. Unbeknownst to its co-hosts or producer, it was violating a patent with every episode recorded and published for your listening pleasure. With the potential licensing fees and damages needed to be paid, it would kill the Super PAC over night.

A jury has ruled in favor of MobileMedia and against Apple in a patent lawsuit involving the iPhone. The jury came to the conclusion that Apple's iPhone infringes on three U.S. patents and some claims of the '068, '075, and '078 patents. The '068 and '075 U.S. patents cover "rejecting incoming calls" and call-processing techniques - or how these functions are communicated wirelessly between base stations and landline telecommunications networks. The U.S. '078 patent relates to changeable keys. The judge overseeing the jury trial, U.S.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has received $500,000 in funding from Minecraft creator and Mojang co-founder Markus "Notch" Persson and serial entrepreneur (and Dallas Mavericks owner) Mark Cuban. Both donated $250,00 each to help the advocacy group fight for patent reform in Washington, according to GII. Cuban is also a star on the popular ABC television show "Shark Tank."

Apple is fighting back against Samsung's recent move to add some of its newer devices to the ongoing patent infringement war the two have been fighting in courts around the world. After successfully getting the iPhone 5 added to a U.S. lawsuit, Samsung has asked the U.S. District Court in San Jose to add the iPod touch 5, iPad 4, and iPad mini to the list of devices that infringe on its patents.

Wildcat Intellectual Property Holdings of Dallas, Texas has sued Wizards of the Coast in Federal Court claiming that the Hasbro subsidiary has violated its electronic trading-card patent by publishing "Magic: The Gathering Online." While Wildcat is suing Wizards of the Coast, it does not name Hasbro in its lawsuit.

It is shocking just how many gamers have at least one or two games lying around that they haven't finished or haven't played. In episode 24 of the Super Podcast Action Committee Andrew and EZK spend a fair amount of time talking about that topic and revealing the results of the latest GamePolitics poll. They also dissect the latest lawsuits including one against Turbine Entertainment and a settlement agreement between Spry Fox and 6Waves over some unauthorized cloning of a popular iOS app. FX Network's Archer also gets an honorable mention..

Gaikai is being taken to court over the technology behind its game streaming services, GamesIndustry International reports. Last week, UK-based T5 Labs filed a lawsuit against Gaikai Inc. saying that the company's streaming game technology infringes on a patent it holds. Gaikai was acquired this year by Sony. Last year the company accused OnLive of violating its patents but court documents were either never filed or unobtainable at this time.

Ontario-based web services company Treehouse is getting ready to rock and troll. The company, who was awarded a vague patent (United States Patent No. 8,180,858) for the "Method And System For Presenting Data Over A Network Based On Network User Choices And Collecting Real-Time Data Related To Said Choices" (or the 858 patent as they refer to it in their lawsuit) has decided to sue Turbine in Delaware for violating the patent with its game Dungeons & Dragons Online. Interestingly enough, the patent was awarded on May 15, 2012.

In a guest post on GIGA OM, Ben Lee, the legal counsel for Twitter argues that it's high time that those who want to go to war over patents - particularly those who use lawsuits as a business model as opposed to actually building anything - should have to bear the cost of litigation.

According to this Tech Radar report, Samsung has gone ahead and added the iPhone 5 to the list of apple devices that infringe on its patents. The company has added the latest iPhone to eight complaints it has filed against Apple, claiming that its devices infringe on various patents it holds.

The popular Q&A site Stack Exchange has teamed up with the U.S. Patent Office to crowd source the patent process. They are doing this with the launch of a new sub portal at patents.stackexchange.com. The channel dedicated to patents will allow the public to scrutinize pending patent applications and will allow them to submit information, and possible prior art for the Patent Office to review.

If you want to know what it might be like to work for the dark side, then this job doing charity work for Intellectual Ventures as its "VP of Global Good" might be right up your alley. The company that is best known as a super powered patent troll is seeking someone to be in charge of doing charity work for the company from its dark citadel in Seattle.

Patent litigation can make or break a start-up and lawmakers know the entire patent litigation system is fundamentally broken - even if they won't publicly admit it. But at least one member of Congress is trying to do something about the practice of patent trolling. Peter DeFazio (D-ORE.) has introduced a bill called the "Saving High-Tech Innovators from Egregious Legal Disputes Act," designed to put a stop to patent abuse.

Nintendo issued a press release this morning announcing that it has prevailed in a lawsuit filed by Copper Innovations Group, LLC. The lawsuit alleged that the Wii console and its controllers infringed on one of the company's patents (U.S. Patent No. 5,640,152). Judge David Cercone of the U.S. District Court in Pittsburgh granted a summary judgment to Nintendo and further ruled that there was no need for a jury trial. Basically Nintendo proved that Copper Innovations Group's lawsuit couldn't pass the smell test.

Jury selection for the trial between Samsung and Apple over patents will begin on July 30 in the U.S. District Court in San Jose, California. The case will be presided over by U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh. Jurors will have to wade through the particulars of the case and decide which company has a valid claim that the other infringed on its patents related to their respective smartphone devices.

In this week’s episode of Super Podcast Action Committee, EZK and I discussed software patents and whether they’re beneficial to the games industry, detrimental or somewhere in between.

Now it’s your turn to chime in.

In Episode 12 of Super Podcast Action Committee, Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight discuss Fez developer Phil Fish's decision not to fix the patch for the game before re-releasing it to Xbox Live (because it costs too much money), Uniloc's patent infringement claims against Minecraft maker Mojang, last week's results from the GamePolitics poll, and the media trying to blame Batman comics, movies and games for the horrific Aurora, Colorado theater shooting.

Over the weekend it was revealed that Minecraft maker Mojang is being sued by a Luxembourg, Germany-based company called Uniloc for patent infringement. The company claims that Mojang violated a patent it holds related to a "system and method for preventing unauthorized access to electronic data".

In an interview with Reuters, the US Court of Appeals (Chicago) judge who recently tossed the patent litigation case between Apple and Motorola described patent litigants as "animals" and said that many companies should not have patent protections.

According to a research paper from Boston University, patent trolls costs U.S. companies and other organizations a staggering $29 billion last year. The study analyzed the effect of intellectual property rights claims made by organizations that own and license patents without producing related goods of their own. Some would say that this is the very definition of a patent troll: a company that buys or licenses patents with the express purpose of litigating its way to financial success.

Motorola has proposed royalty fees to Microsoft in an attempt to put an end to its long running and global patent disputes, but the Xbox 360 and Windows OS maker has rejected its offer claiming that the royalty payments are too high. Motorola's offer would squeeze a 2.25 percent royalty on every Xbox 360 sold and a 50 cent royalty fee on every copy of Windows sold. The royalty fees relate to patented Motorola technology that both products use.

Cisco Systems, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), Activision Blizzard, Intel, and IBM, are the latest entities to send letters to the International Trade Commission asking them not to institute a ban on the Xbox 360 or various Apple products. Florian Mueller of Foss Patents has the breakdown of why Cisco and the ESA have sided with Microsoft in this particular dispute between the company behind Xbox 360 and Windows and Google-owned Motorola Mobility.

Last week the Supreme Court told the Federal Appeals Court that it needs to reconsider its ruling in WildTangent, Inc. v. Ultra- mercial, a patent infringement battle that relates to seeing paid advertisements before viewing or using copyrighted material online. Business leaders like Google and Verizon have sided with WildTangent on this one, as well as the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The tech industry is also watching this case very carefully because it could signal an end to patents with weak definitions or general software ideas or techniques being awarded easily.

Microsoft and Motorola have been at each other’s throats for a while now.

Motorola claims that the Xbox 360 uses “Motorola-developed technology that allows set-top boxes to decode transmissions between its Droid2 and DroidX mobile devices” while Microsoft argues that Motorola refused “to abide by requirements set by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Standards Association to set reasonable license fees of essential technology.”

Judge James Robart of the U.S. District Court of Western Washington today extended a temporary restraining order that he issued last month that prevents Motorola from enforcing any injunction from any other court against Microsoft until he reaches a decision in the Seattle case. Judge Robart extended the temporary restraining order because he needed more time to sort out the case, but that didn't stop him from delivering some harsh criticisms to both sides of the legal battle over patents and licensing.

An International Trade Commission (ITC) judge has ruled that Microsoft violated several patents held by Motorola Mobility when it made its Xbox 360 console. ITC Judge David Shaw said that Microsoft infringed on four of five patents that Motorola filed on its complaint - International Trade Commission, No. 337-752. The patents in the complaint include technology like wireless connections to the Internet and video compression to speed up transmission of data, amongst others.

A federal judge has finally granted Apple's motion to intervene on behalf of iOS developers who have found themselves in a legal battle against Lodsys. It took the court nearly a year to come to this decision. This ruling allows the iOS platform holder to argue in court on behalf of developers who have been sued over alleged patent infringement for using the iOS system's in-app purchasing APIs. Apple has licensed the technology from Lodsys so it will argue in court that developers who use the platform do not infringe on the patent because Apple already obtained a license.