Yes, Nintendo has lost lawsuits. Juries have hit the company with multimillion-dollar patent verdicts, a European consumer group forced it to change its digital storefront policies, and its most recent fiscal year included a roughly $40 million line item for litigation losses. That said, Nintendo’s overall record is lopsided in its favor: many of its biggest courtroom defeats were reversed on appeal, and it wins the large majority of the disputes it fights.
Patent Verdicts Nintendo Lost at Trial
The clearest pattern of Nintendo losses shows up in patent infringement cases brought by smaller companies and individual inventors. Three verdicts stand out, and all three followed the same arc: a jury sided against Nintendo, then Nintendo clawed the judgment back on appeal.
In 2008, a federal jury in the Eastern District of Texas found that Nintendo infringed patents held by Anascape, Ltd. covering force feedback and analog sensor technology in game controllers. The jury awarded $21 million, with the infringement finding covering the GameCube, WaveBird, and Wii Classic controllers (the Wii Remote and Nunchuk were excluded).1Game Developer. Nintendo Loses $21 Million Controller Patent Case The Federal Circuit later reversed, ruling that the key patent was not entitled to the earlier priority date it depended on. Once that date fell away, Sony’s DualShock controllers counted as prior art and wiped out the infringement finding.2Findlaw. Anascape Ltd v. Nintendo of America Inc.
The Wii’s motion controls produced a similar loss. iLife Technologies held a patent originally developed to monitor infants and detect falls in the elderly. In 2017, a Dallas jury unanimously found that the Wiimote infringed and awarded $10.1 million.3Courthouse News Service. Nintendo Hit With $10M Verdict in Wii Patent Case In January 2020, the district court invalidated the verdict, finding the patent directed at an abstract idea and thus ineligible.4AIPLA. Nintendo Knocks Out $10 Million Wiimote Patent Verdict on Appeal The Federal Circuit affirmed a year later.5Findlaw. iLife Technologies Inc. v. Nintendo of America Inc.
The 3DS was the third case. Seijiro Tomita, a former Sony employee, sued over the handheld’s glasses-free 3D display. In March 2013, a Manhattan federal jury awarded him $30.2 million.6Shacknews. Nintendo Loses 3DS Patent Lawsuit, Must Pay $30 Million The Federal Circuit found the trial judge had misconstrued a key patent term and ordered a new trial.7Nintendo Everything. Nintendo Seeing New Trial With Tomita Technologies Over Glasses-Free 3D Patent At the April 2016 bench retrial, the court concluded the 3DS did not infringe because it produced its 3D effect through software algorithms rather than the specific hardware structures the patent covered, and entered judgment for Nintendo.8Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. Tomita Technologies USA LLC v. Nintendo Co. Ltd., Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law
So Nintendo lost at trial three times in a row and reversed all three. That record explains the company’s reputation for grinding every adverse verdict through appeal rather than settling.
The German eShop Pre-Order Loss
One loss stuck. The Federation of German Consumer Organisations (vzbv), acting on a 2018 complaint from Norway’s Consumer Council, challenged Nintendo’s practice of refusing refunds on digital pre-orders in the Switch eShop. Nintendo argued that pre-loading a game to a console fulfilled the contract and triggered a legal exception for digital goods. The vzbv countered that a game the buyer cannot yet play has not been delivered, so the standard fourteen-day withdrawal right still applies.9Nintendo Life. Nintendo Loses Court Appeal Over Switch eShop Pre-Order Cancellations
Nintendo won at the Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main, then lost on appeal. In December 2021, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt reversed. During the hearing, the judges advised Nintendo that the consumer group’s claim was justified; Nintendo conceded, and the court issued an acknowledgment judgment upholding the vzbv’s action in its entirety.10Game Developer. Nintendo Loses Court Appeal in Germany Over eShop Pre-Order Cancellations Nintendo had to honor the fourteen-day right of withdrawal on pre-ordered games that were not yet playable and adjusted eShop policies in Germany and Norway.11vzbv. Court Confirms Right to Withdrawal for Video Game Pre-Order The current policy allows cancellation of pre-orders placed more than seven days before a game’s release.
The Blockbuster Settlement
The 1989 dispute with Blockbuster is often described as a Nintendo loss, but the record is muddier than that. Nintendo sued Blockbuster in U.S. District Court in Newark, New Jersey, for photocopying game instruction manuals and including the copies with rental cartridges.12UPI. Nintendo Files Copyright Lawsuit Against Blockbuster The case never went to trial. The companies settled, with Blockbuster agreeing to stop photocopying and instead producing its own original documentation for rental games.13dfarq.homeip.net. When Nintendo Sued Blockbuster Nintendo stopped the photocopying but did not stop Blockbuster from renting games with substitute guides, which was the underlying commercial harm it had wanted to address.
Recent Losses and Settlements
Nintendo settled a patent dispute with Malikie Innovations, which holds former BlackBerry patents, at the Unified Patent Court in December 2025. Terms were not disclosed.14IP Fray. Nintendo, Malikie Apparently Settle UPC Patent Infringement Dispute
In its fiscal year ending March 2026, Nintendo reported ¥6.414 billion (approximately $40 million) in “loss on litigation,” a line item that was zero the previous year.15GosuGamers. Nintendo Hit With 6.4 Billion Litigation Loss Following Major Patent Disputes The company’s financial disclosures do not itemize how that figure was distributed among settlements, damages, and other matters.
The Wins Vastly Outnumber the Losses
Any honest account of Nintendo’s courtroom record has to note how rare the losses are. The company operates IP enforcement programs in more than 40 countries and wins most of what it files.
The formative case came in 1982, when Universal City Studios sued Nintendo claiming Donkey Kong infringed King Kong. Universal had already collected nearly $4.8 million from Nintendo licensees like Coleco under threat of litigation. The federal court found that Universal itself had previously argued in California litigation that the King Kong story was in the public domain, ruled there was no likelihood of confusion between the two properties, and awarded Nintendo damages on its counterclaims for misappropriation, tortious interference, and vicarious copyright infringement. Universal president Sidney Sheinberg had told Nintendo to start saving for its attorney’s fees; the court ordered Universal to pay them instead.16Justia. Universal City Studios Inc. v. Nintendo Co. Ltd., 615 F. Supp. 838
More recent enforcement wins follow the same trajectory. Nintendo obtained a $2,115,000 summary judgment against ROM site operator Matthew Storman (RomUniverse) in May 2021, comprising $1,715,000 for 49 willful copyright infringements and $400,000 for trademark infringement.17TorrentFreak. Nintendo Wins $2.1 Million Judgment Against Pirate Site Operator Storman was later ordered to destroy all unauthorized Nintendo games and file a declaration under penalty of perjury.18IGN. Now-Defunct RomUniverse Ordered to Destroy All Pirated Nintendo Games In Japan, Nintendo pursued a Tokyo go-kart tour company operating as “MariCar” through three levels of court. The Intellectual Property High Court increased damages to 50 million yen (about $484,000),19Kotaku. Japan’s Unofficial Mario Kart Ordered to Pay Nintendo Over $450,000 and on December 25, 2020, the Supreme Court of Japan dismissed the final appeal.20Japan Today. Nintendo’s Victory Over MariCar Finalized by Supreme Court of Japan
The full picture, then: Nintendo does lose in court, but the losses are outnumbered, and the biggest ones tend to get reversed. The German eShop ruling is the cleanest example of a loss that stuck, and Nintendo’s most recent financial disclosures confirm that litigation costs are back on the ledger.