Interactive Exercise Company Sues Nintendo For Patent Infringement 67
isometric writes with this excerpt from Gamasutra:
"IA Labs is accusing Nintendo of infringing on two separate IA Labs patents through technology used in the Nintendo Wii, Wii Fit, Wii Fit Plus, the Wii Balance Board, Wii Remote, Wii Wheel, Wii MotionPlus, Wii Nunchuck and Wii Zapper. ... The patents in question are 'Computer interactive isometric exercise system and method for operatively interconnecting the exercise system to a computer system for use as a peripheral' and 'Force measurement system for an isometric exercise device.' The claim said that IA Labs had been in contact with Nintendo during 2007-2008, discussing possible overlaps of IA Labs and Nintendo patents. Emails between IA Labs and Nintendo showed that IA Labs wanted to license its technology to Nintendo. IA Labs was also in talks with Nintendo about a product called Sqweeze, a controller for Wii and PC that's meant to increase physical activity when gaming."
Prior Art? (Score:1, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Pad seems to take care of this patent: "Computer interactive isometric exercise system and method for operatively interconnecting the exercise system to a computer system for use as a peripheral", though not sure about the force measurement one.
But the Wii isn't isometric (Score:5, Informative)
The remarkable, novel thing about the Wii was using accelerometers in its controller. That means you're not just applying force; you're doing so with a range of motion. That's aerobic exercise, using your own weight as the resistance.
Isometrics are another good form of exercise, and they can be done with much simpler tools, since all you need to measure is force. But that isn't what the Wii is doing.
Re: IA Labs actually around a lot longer (Score:3, Informative)
From reading the article, it looks like IA Labs is actually Powergrid Fitness -- a company that has been releasing gaming-based exercise devices since as early as 2004: http://www.futurelooks.com/forums/showthread.php?p=81382 [futurelooks.com]
So definitely not what I would consider to be a "patent troll" given that they've had devices on the market since before any of the control mechanisms for the Wii were even announced.
If you look around, they've been at CES with new or updated devices pretty much every year from 2004 onward.
Re:Patent Numbers? (Score:3, Informative)
7121982 and 7331226.
Re:But the Wii isn't isometric (Score:3, Informative)
Here is the other patent [freepatentsonline.com], I am too lazy to read through two patents in one day, someone else have a go.
Re:LIke the old addage (or new?) says, (Score:3, Informative)
However, I agree that their marketing sucks.
Prior Art (Score:3, Informative)
Re:But the Wii isn't isometric (Score:4, Informative)
At least as far as the first patent, I don't think they can get away with suing over 2 separate non-infringing inventions because they can be combined to serve a similar purpose for specific pieces of software.
The second patent's early claims sound like electronic scales until the more specific claims. If I'm not mistaken, Nintendo was initially going to work with bathroom scale makers on the technology in the balance board so that's probably where they got their ideas from. Chances are these guys are going to have to prove electronic scales aren't prior art or that Nintendo is infringing based on the more specific claims (they're pretty specific about such things as use of metals, resins etc). I suspect they won't get it to fly on just the initial claims due to prior art then get shot down as soon as the claims involving materials pops up and Nintendo is using a different material in their invention. In fact, after looking over all the claims of the second patent... did they really just patent their own implementation of a damn scale?