Koei Tecmo announced that the Supreme Court of Japan had rejected its final appeal regarding the patent infringement lawsuit filed by Capcom. [Thanks, 4Gamer.]
The final appeal settlement brought a complete closure to the lawsuit, which was filed in 2014. Capcom sued Koei Tecmo for infringing a couple of game-related patents owned by the company. The first one involved unlocking more content by reading the disc of a previous game, commonly seen in the Xtreme Legends expansions of Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors games. The other handled controller rumble to convey information not visible on the player’s screen, was used in the Fatal Frame series.
On September 11, 2019, Japan’s Intellectual Property High Court ruled mostly in favor of Capcom. Although the court dismissed some of the first patent’s claims, it upheld all the remaining claims, including the ones for the second patent.
Koei Tecmo was then ordered by the high court to pay 143,843,710 yen in compensation to Capcom. However, it sent a final appeal to the Supreme Court of Japan on September 24, 2019. The Supreme Court announced its decision to reject this appeal on December 15, 2020.
In its latest press release, Koei Tecmo earnestly accepted the results as it scrutinized the timeline of the lawsuit and went over how it will be applied to the development of future games. Koei Tecmo also reserved the amount of compensation to be paid to Capcom, and the effects on the former’s financial performance in the fiscal year ending March 2021 will be light.
Capcom’s aforementioned patents have since expired, and Koei Tecmo has also generally moved away from its Mixjoy practice. The closest application to the expansion practice in recent years was Attack on Titan 2: Final Battle, which was offered with upgrade DLC and a physical disc containing the full game. Samurai Warriors 4-II was made as a separate standalone game from the original release. Dynasty Warriors 9 added more characters and gameplay features with a combination of paid DLC and free updates.
