Controller Patent Suit Won Against Sony

ivec writes "Immersion Corporation announced that the jury returned a verdict favorable to Immersion in its patent infringement suit against Sony Computer Entertainment. The jury found that Sony infringed all the asserted claims of U.S. Patent Nos. 6,275,213 and 6,424,333 and that those claims were valid. I was surprised how recent these filings were (2000 and 2001). The patents cover 'vibrating devices' such as joysticks."

Comments

NOT FUNNY

[grm_wnr]

The patents cover 'vibrating devices' such as joysticks.

I refuse to make a joke about that!

n64?

[j0nb0y]

I guess USPTO patent examiners have never played the N64 with a rumble pack...

Re:n64?

[Mekabyte]

Actually, I researched this last night trying to figure out why Sony didn't pull the Rumble Pak as prior art, or why Nintendo has not been sued by Immersion. What I found only left me more confused.

Patent 6,200,253 is Nintendo's Rumble Pak patent, which came out over a year before the Immersion patent. The thing is, it specifically talks about being a detachable device. The GameCube controller's rumble is built in, so it would seem to fall under the Immersion patent. However, maybe they have some sort of private agreement not to sue since Immersion would likely lose their patent.

Patent 6,743,104 is Nintendo's patent for rumble in Game Boy cartridges. This patent references both their Rumble Pak patent as well as the Immersion patent.

It's also interesting to note that something like a dozen Immersion patents specifically reference the Nintendo Rumble Pak, Sony Dual Shock, and sometimes the Sega Jump Pack. Clearly Immersion was well aware of force feedback devices and who was actually using them. I'm not sure what took them so long to try to make a claim on it.

All that said, by the manner in which the Immersion patent in question reads, they pretty much patented every possible alternate configuration of a force feedback/rumble device (different housing, different actuators, different shaped eccentric mass, etc). In being so general however, you'd think that vibrators would be prior art as the first sentence of the patent reads "A man-machine interface which provides tactile feedback to various sensing body parts is disclosed."

Prior Art...

[ebrandsberg]

Information straight from the USPTO:

http://vsmca.tripod.com/sxd.pdf

If these don't count as prior art for vibrating joysticks, I don't know what does.

Similar Microsoft lawsuit

[Anonymous Coward]

As it turns out, Microsoft settled a similar lawsuit with Immersion to the tune $26 million, and can license the techology for their own PC and XBox gamepads. Immersion is required to repay some of that amount in the event of a victory in the Sony lawsuit.

Subsequent to the settlement, Microsoft bought a large number of shares in Immersion, and also obtained the rights to sub-license the technology to other parties, including Sony.

Sony, Microsoft, no Nintendo?

[KDR_11k]

Why didn't they sue Nintendo? Were they afraid they'd get sued for infringing an earlier patent by Nintendo that described the same thing?

The "Prior Art" section of the Rumble Pak patent states that "Furthermore, computer games have been known, in which a vibration generating source is provided in a joy-stick, and a vibration is generated at the time of an attack to an own fighter from a player's enemy fighter in a shooting game, for example."

Since Immersion's patent apparently only covers Joysticks it might not conflict with the Rumble Pak Patent, but the Rumble Pak patent clearly states that there has been prior art for joysticks (and that the Rumble Pak has no prior art since it isn't a joystick).

It lists Research disclosure 28373, "Joystick with Tactile Feedback", disclosed anonymously Nov. 1987., perhaps that's our prior art. Can anyone get that document?