Valve Must Pay $4 Million Over Steam Controller Patent Infringement

A US jury has ordered Valve to pay $4 million in damages. According to the jury, the company has infringed a patent of game accessory maker Scuf Gaming, part of Corsair, with its Steam Controller.

As part of a case before a US court in Seattle, the jury found not only that there was patent infringement, but also that Valve deliberately did so. Under American law, the latter is a ground for possible compensation, which is on top of the four million dollars. Nothing else is known about that yet.

According to a lawyer from Ironburg Inventions, a division of Scuf Gaming that is responsible for intellectual property, Valve was drawn to this issue in 2014, Law360 writes. Valve would then have pointed to the prototype of the Steam Controller, where controls for the middle fingers are on the back. Ironburg Inventions had just received a patent for it.

Valve would nevertheless have gone ahead with the design. Ironburg’s attorney argues that knowingly ignoring the infringement is at the heart of the matter. He speaks of a ‘classic David versus Goliath story’ in which Valve thought it could do what it wanted as a major party in this case. Microsoft did take out a license and uses the buttons on the back of its Xbox Elite controllers.

The game company stopped producing the Steam Controller in November 2019. The gamepad cost about 55 euros. The controller distinguished itself with two trackpads in the places where most other controllers have the thumbsticks and a d-pad. The trackpads were clickable and provided haptic feedback. The Steam Controller was introduced in 2013, as part of its drive to expand the Steam platform to include SteamOS and Steam Machine consoles.

The patent, which revolves around the number 11 controls that are operated with the middle fingers.