Nintendo Loses Controller Patent Lawsuit 324
kryogen1x alerts us to coverage at 1up indicating that Nintendo controller may soon become scarce — Nintendo lost in court to Anascape over analog sticks in their Wii and GameCube controllers.This isn't the first time the big manufacturers have been targeted in lawsuits involving features in their controllers. From the article: "The lawsuit concerns the analog sticks in the Classic Controller and GameCube controllers, which Texas-based Anascape Ltd. claims to hold a patent on that Nintendo violated. The court has ruled in favor of Anascape, and US District Judge Ron Clark has rejected Nintendo's request for a new trial. As a result, Clark said he will put a ban on the sale of the controllers (which includes sales of GameCube systems) starting tomorrow, July 23, unless Nintendo posts a bond or puts royalties into an escrow account."
What. (Score:1, Insightful)
FUCK.
Re:As usual ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Hard to say who to root for, if anyone.
How about basing your decision on the merit of the case rather than which side you "like" more?
In any case, the patent is almost certainly overbroad and/or obvious and never should have been issued, and they were only sued in the court that they were because it is notoriously biased in favor of patent trolls.
Prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not enough patent trolls (Score:5, Insightful)
Apparently the big corportations are not hurt enough to change their attitudes towards patents. May more ridiculous patent suits appear, and clear everybody's eyes that patents are sucking and they are obstacles to (rather than protection of) innovation.
Re:I couldn't find info about Anascape (Score:5, Insightful)
What a coincidence, headquartered only a short drive away from Patent Troll Central, a.k.a., the US District Court, Eastern District of Texas.
Re:As usual ... (Score:5, Insightful)
"are popular with plaintiffs because they provide the plaintiff with a predictable litigation timetable"
And because the Eastern District of Texas is famous for making sure the plaintiff wins most of the time.
I had a good chuckle.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Hah... Tell that to MadCatz, or Game Infinity, or Pelican Accessories and others. They seem to be doing quite well at making alternative controllers. (With analogue sticks!)
Re:Prior art? (Score:3, Insightful)
The N64 had an analog stick and rumble pak in 1997.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I couldn't find info about Anascape (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not enough patent trolls (Score:3, Insightful)
Live by the sword, die by the sword (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I couldn't find info about Anascape (Score:5, Insightful)
did the inventor produce working samples?
did the inventor ever attempt to manufacture or license his new idea?
or did he think of ways of joining existing technologies together, patent it, and wait for some poor schlepp to try _actually_ doing it?
thus, the cries of 'patent troll' appear to be in order here.
Re:Live by the sword, die by the sword (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:You can have my Wii Controller... (Score:3, Insightful)
yes, the fort knox of gaming accessories--the wii strap.
http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/did-wii-break-your-tv-/494785 [yahoo.com]
Re:I couldn't find info about Anascape (Score:2, Insightful)
Did he? Or did engineers from those three corporations also decide to implement something obvious but not bother to patent their "inventions" first?
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Gun Laws and freedom (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm really starting to get pissed off. Corporate America is infringing on freedoms more and more, but in insidious ways.
Challenging free speech with law suits.
Challenging freedom of "fair use" with lobbyists who write laws and get them passed.
The patent system affects our freedom of expression.
If these were invading armies, we'd get our guns and defend ourselves. With internationalization, private entities are acting more like governments with no democratic feedback.
I tell you, "patent trolls" wouldn't dare file stupid law suits if we stormed their offices and took the corporate officers as POWs.
I know this is hyperbole, but I'm also kind of serious, we need to start fighting these extra-legal entities who abuse our laws and have no personal legal responsibility.
Re:As usual ... (Score:3, Insightful)
A company does not have human rights. Try again.
Re:Prior art? (Score:2, Insightful)
Actually, to whoever spells it "payed", PLEASE KEEP IT UP.
When people use that form, they are converting a yucky irregular verb into a regular one. That is a good thing because the fewer irregular forms English has, the easier it is to learn.
And how do such conversions happen? By people gradually using the regular instead of the irregular. (In fact, some linguist has evidence showing that verbs regularize in proportion to how uncommon they are, and uncommon verbs are precisely the ones you can get away with for using the "wrong" form on. And thank secular God that I could use prepositions at the end of clauses there!)
Re:I couldn't find info about Anascape (Score:3, Insightful)
I've seen private inventors being run over by big business, who has a tendency to totally ignore patents that isn't owned by themselves
The sad part is that if Big N is like many other tech companies, they are literally ignoring patents in the sense that they explicitly tell their engineers not to do patent searches or otherwise try to figure out if any of the things they create in the course of doing their jobs are covered by a patent.
If patents were land mines, and technology were a country, it would be Afghanistan. Or maybe the Korean DMZ. There's so many patents that it's next to impossible not to violate at least one in any non-trivial piece of technology. Even if you do a patent search, you aren't guaranteed to find every potentially applicable patent, nor be able to sort out which do and don't apply in precisely the same way a hypothetical judge would. Yet if you are aware of the existence of a potentially applicable patent, and are found to be in violation, then that's treble damages. Even just doing the search to begin with could imply that you knew of the patent and knowingly violated it.
Thus, they ignore the patents, and hope for the best. When they violate another tech company's patent, then hopefully their own pile of patents gives them leverage. If it's a small inventor, they can either settle or hope the inventor can't afford the legal battle. If it's a patent troll, then they're basically screwed.
I don't know about this case in detail, but it certainly seems plausible to me that Nintendo engineers, deliberately ignorant of any patents and given the concept for a controller with analog triggers that "click" when fully depressed, came up with an invention very similar to the one in the patent.
Private inventors certainly get screwed by this setup. The big tech companies whose engineers are actually making things get screwed too. The system is broken. The only people it is working for are people who do nothing but buy up other peoples' patents, and then sue other companies for violating them, never inventing nor creating anything themselves except obstacles to progress. This is the opposite of the intention of the patent system. It's broken.
Re:What. (Score:3, Insightful)
Nintendo is a Japanese company every one of whose controllers purchased in the US leads to a net export of dollars to that country.
Anascape Ltd is an American company, with an American patent, in an American court, with an American judge presiding, and every penny paid by Nintendo or Sony to such companies leads to a net influx of Yen to the US.
The only remaining question here is were you people born this morning?!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)