back to article Wii controller lawsuit costs Nintendo $21m

Nintendo has vowed to fight a court order demanding it pay $21m (£10.7m/€13.5m) to a US gaming company for patent infringements associated with controllers for the Wii and GameCube. Although specific details of the violation of Anascape's intellectual property rights haven’t been disclosed yet, the US court found that Nintendo …

COMMENTS

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  1. James Pickett
    Pirate

    Hmm...

    "a regular-looking game controller with analogue pressure sensors"

    That's anything with an analogue joystick then? Only in America...

  2. Neil Docherty

    What about the other consoles?

    Surely Sony and Microsoft can also be sued...? The PS3 has pressure sensitive buttons all over the thing!

  3. Jon Brindley

    Ambiguous Patent Law Strikes Again!

    "a patent for a regular-looking game controller with analogue pressure sensors."

    You mean .. with .. buttons?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    McCreevy bring Patent trolling to Europe

    McCreevy's at it again, he's trying to reduce the innovation test needed to determine if a patent represents a new invention and widening patents to software and business processes. Bringing patent trolling to EU.

    Specifically, he's trying to slot in ' AS A WHOLE' to the patent wording.

    So they can make ever more bullshit inventions simply by adding extra clauses until they find something that hasn't been patented.You invent a cold fusion, a patent troll patents 'cold fusion used to power houses' and blocks your invention for use in powering houses.

    Then there's the computer trick, you can't patent software, you can't patent business processes or pure maths or discoveries.... but with the new McCreevy text you can just tack on something else to make it patentable.

    I patent x+1 used in a ballot counting machine....

    I patent handshake transactions as used in the financial industry....

    So Symbian recently patented late loading of dll's thereby undermining the whole computer industry with every PC late loading their device drivers that way. (Which idiot didn't know we late load dlls for every driver?)

    http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/patents_software_online/

    If they are found to not be able to patent software, they'll simply tack on 'late loading dlls in a phone' and 'late loading dlls in a pc', ... to make it patentable again.

    In typical McCreevy style, he's agreed this change in a treating with the USA, bypassing the EU law making process and taking his orders direct from Washington.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Uh...

    Maybe it's just the article that's vague but wouldn't every controller ever made fall into those patent categories? How come this company isn't suing MS, SONY, Gravis, Logitech, etc?

    Paris? She likes stick shaped things and has pressure sensors too...

  6. George Johnson

    Make a difference?

    Being a family type organisation, I know they don't want the bad press but is $20M really going to cause Nintendo any problems?

  7. Mark
    Gates Horns

    Further proof that James Sherwood is a Xbox fanboy..

    The fact that he decided to exclude the fact that Microsoft was also sued as part of the same patent infringement.

    Way to go james, make the entire Register journos look like a bunch of biased buffoons..

    http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2008/05/12/daily26.html?jst=b_ln_hl

  8. Andy Turner

    Patent Squatters

    They should get thrown out of court unless they can prove that they actually developed and retailed a competing product. The lawsuit should represent losses that they can prove (or even explain) that they have incurred. Otherwise it's just too easy to patent squat, and simply register patents for whatever captures the imagination and in the vaguest terms possible, for a product that you've no chance or intention of ever building.

    I might just go an register a patent for a "thing" that "does stuff".

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    you yankies...

    .... have a stupid patent system. how its it right people can just patent anything. i know im going to patent a mecanical device. if anything is ever made that moves and starts selling i will sue! idiots!

  10. Karim Bourouba

    is this really for the Wii?

    I had read elsewhere that the ruling was over the Wavebird controller for the GameCube.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Is it a Texan court by any chance?

    IIRC a lot of patent infringement cases are brought before Texan courts which have shown a greater tendency to side with the plaintiff.

    Anyone able to confirm this or shall I put it down to false recollection under the influence of eau de meths?

  12. JeffyPooh
    Unhappy

    We have a Wii...

    An|d th|e scree|n look|ed like this.

    So| we |exchan|ged it,| but guess

    wh|at? |The rep|lacem|ent Wii has

    th|e sa|me vide|o GPU| fault. Sigh,

    it'|s rea|lly anno|ying t|o have to

    send th|e secon|d unit back...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Mark Smells

    of Sony fanboism

    and the fatty sweat he generates from frantically responding to every post on the internet that could possibly say something bad about sony

    waaaaaah

  14. Iain
    Thumb Down

    Further proof that Mark is incapable of basic reading comprehension

    Only the Nintendo suit has been completed; there is nothing to report in the Microsoft case yet.

    But then, giving that Mark considers it to be Xbox fanboyism for there to be a single story on the entire Register site that doesn't desperately scramble to shoehorn a mention of the RROD in, what do you expect. Seek professional help, Mark; it's not funny any more.

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Analogue Triggers

    So by "analogue pressure sensors" it seems it's the analogue triggers that are the target of this suit. I'd have thought the neGcon controller that Namco made for the PS1 would have qualified as prior art (since Anascape's patents are dated from '97 onwards and the neGcon is from around the PS1's launch in '94).

    More can be found on the neGcon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negcon

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Analogue?

    As far as I know only the playstation and controllers have analogue buttons (triggers in the xbox case). The gamecube controller had abxy (or whatever) that were purely digital, they had two clicks in the shoulder buttons, but I think they're digital, they only have 2 sensitivities.

  17. andy rock
    Stop

    oh dear

    "At least Nintendo’s executives can use the boxing game on Wii Sports to vent some of their money-loss rage."

    who on earth thought of this line? this is 'journalism' straight out of the The Sun!

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