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Sony Sued By University Over PS2 Chip

Posted by simoniker on from the full-recall-expected-soon dept.

Mike Hawk writes "Cry me a river! Sony is being sued over the creation of its 'Emotion Engine' PlayStation 2 chip. The University of Wisconsin (Madison) has filed the suit claiming the "EE Core" violates a 16 year old U-Dub patent. And you guys have been gaming with 16 year old technology the whole time - those PS2 jaggies make perfect sense now..." Since this story broke on Friday, a CNET News article has added a little more information, quoting a University spokesman as saying the patent involves "advanced chipmaking technologies and has been licensed by a number of technology companies", but not Sony or the chip's co-creator, Toshiba.

3 of 40 comments (clear)

  1. Offtopic nitpick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Um, "U-Dub" is what people call the University of Washington. I don't recall anyone ever calling it that while at the University of Wisconsin.

  2. Re:Question by xenocide2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually, NSF does ocasionally offer grants to CS professors. One of my professors is part of the NSF funded Open Source Quality project. Several others have been awarded NSF grants as well. In fact, few have research directly for the DoD. A couple do have grants from popular defense contractors, like Honeywell, and I presume there are some strings attached.

    --
    I Browse at +4 Flamebait

    Open Source Sysadmin

  3. So do I by kninja · · Score: 2, Informative

    So do I.

    Our University gets money from things like this, and that is a good thing. If companies didn't have to license patents from WARF, do you think that they would donate money to the university for more research? I'm not optimistic that they would. This is a way to fund more research, which in turn attracts more top talent to Wisconsin (Madtown, I don't know where the U-Dub came from), making it a better school.

    If you work in a lab here and get a patent through warf, the school gets something like 80% and the creator gets 20%. This is another reason that we have some really great professors here, it's like profit sharing.

    WARF originated from a professor adding a vitamin to milk to cure rickets. The school has made so much money from that patent that it has developed into a very good institution, contributing to the world's fight.

    I'm not sure that sony can say the same thing about the playstation 2, especially with all of the productivity the PS2 costs us :)