Nintendo Ordered to Pay $30 Million in 3-D Patent Suit

By Naoko Fujimura & Takashi Amano - Mar 14, 2013 1:16 AM ET

Nintendo Co. (7974) said it was ordered to pay $30.2 million to a former Sony Corp. (6758)employee after a federal jury in New York ruled that the maker of the 3DS machine infringed on his patent.

The jury ruled that Nintendo’s handheld player infringed on a 3-D technology patent held by Seijiro Tomita, said Yasuhiro Minagawa, a spokesman for Nintendo.

Tomita, who worked for Sony for almost 30 years before quitting in 2002, sued Nintendo in 2011, according to court documents. That is the same year Nintendo, the world’s biggest video-game console maker, introduced the 3DS, which allows users to see 3-D images without special glasses.

Nintendo said it will appeal.

“We believe we can win a ruling that our 3DS doesn’t infringe the patent,” Minagawa said by phone.

The Kyoto, Japan-based company in January lowered its full- year sales forecast for the 3DS to 15 million units from 17.5 million while predicting an operating loss of 20 billion yen ($208 million) for the year ending March. The creator of Super Mario and Zelda is struggling to compete with tablet computers made by Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics Co.

Nintendo released its latest home console, the Wii U, last year.

To contact the reporters on this story: Naoko Fujimura in Tokyo at nfujimura@bloomberg.net; Takashi Amano in Tokyo at tamano6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Tighe at mtighe4@bloomberg.net