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PlayStation Sales Halted?
Narf Narf writes "According to Japan Today, the U.S. District Court in Oakland, California, has ordered Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. and its U.S. unit to pay $90.7 million in damages to Immersion Corp. for patent infringement over controllers used with PlayStation game consoles. In the ruling handed down Thursday, the federal court also ordered Sony Computer Entertainment and Sony Entertainment America Inc. to stop selling the PlayStation and PlayStation 2 game consoles using Dualshock controllers as well as more than 40 game software products." Update: 03/28 04:51 GMT by Z : ...which was followed immediately by an injunction, to allow Sony time for an appeal, and a compulsory licensing agreement.
I believe that the judge's order has been stayed and PS2's can be sold. More Bad News for Sony
It's a legitimate patent I would say. Just because your so damned used to vibrating controllers doesn't negate the fact that immersion had the patent before Sony introduced their dual shock controllers.
What was it about the Dualshock that caused the violation?
It was an American company claiming patent infringement before an American judge against a Japanese company. I'd say S.O.P.
Here's what gamespot has to say on this.
You can't take the sky from me...
Before everyone goes mental saying "what is there to patent on a vibrating controller" you should have a better understand of what Immersion's patents (and thus suit) covers. Immersion's patents relate to giving developers very fine-grained control over the motors driving the "vibration units" in things such as pagers, mobile phones, and yes game controllers. In particular they allow you to do more than just have "off/on" control. Play a game like Gran Turismo and you'll see what I mean - you really can feel the terrain (and your car's grip or lack of) through the Dual Shock controllers - they aren't simply in an on-off mode.
That is what the patents cover, and you'll notice that Microsoft have already settled with Immersion over a similar suit.
--- There's no place like 127.0.0.1
"Also, patenet claims SHOULD also include proof that the design wasn't come upon independently and without using any of the claimers work."
You realize, don't you, that this would be nigh impossible to prove except in the most contrived of examples? You can't prove that someone else did not think of something. If you're in favor of just dismantling patent law altogether, since that's what your proposal would do, then just say so.
Immersion holds patents for force feedback technology which cover certain aspects of the rumble effect used in game joypads, and also named Microsoft as a defendant in its original lawsuit in 2002 - but the Xbox manufacturer settled out of court in July 2003 by signing a licensing agreement with the firm.
There is nothing out of touch about the ninth circuit court.. you need to stop drinking the koolaid:
t _o f_Appeals_for_the_Ninth_Circuit
The court is considered by some to have an overly liberal bias, but arguably a majority of its judges are conservatives. While 17 judges have been appointed by Democratic presidents, 5 of those are solid conservatives. Thus only 12 of the Democrat-appointed judges are liberals or moderates, potentially leaving the remaining 15 as conservatives.
It is often called "the most overturned appeals court in the United States", but this is mostly a product of its high caseload. On a percentage basis, the circuit is not overturned much more than any other. (Indeed, in 2003 it had the least reversal rate of any appeals court with more than five cases reviewed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Cour
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
That's the way the patent system works. That's the way it was _designed_ to work.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Interest.
(found that here.)
Hank! White!
Links to the patents: 6,424,333, 6,275,213.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Yeah, the Dual-Shock playstation (have the original, the dual, and the PS2). But according to the article, the Dual-Shock was also found to be infringing, not just the PS2.
I am John Hurt.
as a patent case which circuit is irrelevant ALL appeals from patent cases go to the Federal Circuit- based in D.C.
Sony sells Dual Shock controllers in different colors as PS2 accessories. You can see the motors and the weights in the translucent models, no need to disassemble.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
y'know you can get adapters to hook the old SNES pads up to USB on your PC? In fact, you can get something like that for just about every old console out there.
Here y'go.. a quick google turned up a SNES one here at Lik Sang
Curiosity was framed. Ignorance killed the cat.
Yeah, but remeber, Microsoft got hit also( From Immersion's web site) so its not just the dualshock controllers. As this article mentions, Microsft ended up licensing the technology (and became a shareholder, although this isn't mentioned).
I don't know if they patented the double click (or something very similar) but I think they did patent the right click menu. :)
Well, Apple's safe but what about others?
And that TAB thing was about web browsers. So you can navigate through a page using TAB ("tabbed browsing"). I guess this seems like an invention you *could* patent, but it's not like they sued anyone over it. All web browsers I know of use it and I haven't heard of Microsoft doing something about it.
In fact, Microsoft has a lot of patents (4000 only last year I believe) but I haven't heard if they'd sue anyone over them. Like the right click patent. Nearly every operating system has this.
I may be worng, but I believe the patent had to do with computer control of motors as haptic technology. In the rumble pack the motors are on or off, whereas in the Playstation and X-box the motors can be controlled providing various sensations.
because the patent refers to a specific implementation of the vibration technology. Microsoft licensed it. Nintendo's rumble pack is a completely different hardware technology that was developed independantly (and a year earlier) from Immersion's "haptic" force-feedback solution. You can get controllers that use Immersion's solution for GC from Logitech.
Here are a few Bullet Points:
A man-machine interface is disclosed which provides force and texture information to sensing body parts. The interface is comprised of a force actuating device that produces a force which is transmitted to a force applying device. The force applying device applies the generated force to a pressure sensing body part. A force sensor on the force applying device measures the actual force applied to the pressure sensing body part, while angle sensors measure the angles of relevant joint body parts. A computing device uses the joint body part position information to determine a desired force value to be applied to the pressure sensing body part. The computing device combines the joint body part position information with the force sensor information to calculate the force command which is sent to the force actuating device. In this manner, the computing device may control the actual force applied to a pressure sensing body part to a desired force which depends upon the positions of related joint body parts. In addition, the interface is comprised of a displacement actuating device which produces a displacement which is transmitted to a displacement applying device (e.g., a texture simulator). The displacement applying device applies the generated displacement to a pressure sensing body part. The force applying device and displacement applying device may be combined to simultaneously provide force and displacement information to a pressure sensing body part.
I recall being a kid back in 1993 and going to a shopping mall and visiting EB games. They had this demonstration joystick that you could set to have different sensations and they were very real. Everything from flying to firing a machine gun. That was the technology that they made possible. Sony will have to learn to play ball if they use patented techology. It may be in a US court, but Immersion also has a patent for the same technology in Japan and IIRC, the US has harmonized it's patent system internationally.
Please note the language in the patent:"This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/066,608 filed Apr. 24, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,017 which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08,565,102 filed Nov. 30, 1995, abandoned.
The patent office does need overhauled, because the examiners are either idiots or they assume that everybody else is. This patent is a perfect example of the fact.
Dualshock was available for PS1 aswell. I remember playing Ape Escape with it. Now ape escape was released on 05/31/1999 according to gamespot. And the pattents i have seen mentioned was filed:
Filed: April 18, 2001
Filed: May 1, 2000
They however seem to be holding earlier patents aswell but they aren't mentioned in the suit and are thus void(?).
You guys are a bit too late...
These guys thought of it first... (Note, saucy picture, oohh!)
Yup...
It's called laches and it's an affirmative defense. http://www.lectlaw.com/def/l056.htm
Yes, Dual Shock controllers came out with the first Gran Turismo, released on December 23, 1997.
Even though the infringed patents #6275213 and #6424333 were issued on August 14, 2001 and July 23, 2002 respectively, they're "submarine patents" originally filed on November 30, 1995.
Until 2003, US patent filers could request repeated continuations to intentionally delay issue of a patent for years, until a practical implementation of a technology appeared. Then they they let their submarine patent surface and collect royalties for 17 years from the issue date. (In 2003, the rules changed so that patents now last 20 years from the filing date.)
Sorry, I call bullshit. The patents in question were filed in 2000 and 2001, not in 1993 as you indicate in your post.
The patents are 6,275,213 (filed May 1, 2000) and 6,424,333 (filed April 18, 2001). Look them up on uspto.gov.
The Playstation 2 was first demoed in August 1999, launched March 4, 2000 and came with the DualShock II controller.
Now tell me exactly how Sony can be infringing on a patent that didn't exist at the time the claimed infriging device was launched?
Furthermore, Immersion's patents are so broad they encompass anything that a) produces vibration via a mass on a spinning axis that is b) controlled by a processing device of any kind.
A vibrating pager is the most obvious example of prior art I can think of, and Motorola's been making them a lot longer than Immersion's even existed.
Or, as others have pointed out, a vibrator is also controlled by a processing device, albeit an organic one.
Here's hoping this lawsuit will result in a challenge to frivolous patent claims.
cheers
No, Nintendo has patents for vibration that predate the Immersion patent. Looking at the design of the rumble pack for the N64 and the GC controller it seems that the vibration is implemented differently.
The last paragraph of this article deals with the Nintendo question.
The later models of Playstation 1 came with a Dual Shock controller. You could also buy a dual shock separately. That was before the Playstation 2 came out, and absolutely before these guys filed their patent.
My other first post is car post.
From reading the article in the posted link in the parent it is obvious that Immersion did own most of the so called prior art thus negating the argument.
It doesn't matter who owns the prior art.
If it did, it would be trivial to have a neverending patent on a device, all you'd have to do is make a trivial change and re-patent it every ten years. You'd always own the prior art.
The suit against sony was based on newer patents of updated technologies developed by immersion and licensed by almost all of the other counsole and third party add-on manufactures.
A. If the "updating" is obvious, it's not patentable.
B. Liscensing on its own doesn't really say much about the validity of a patent. See my previous post in the thread regarding this.
Life is too short to proofread.
Against an american company..
See this snippit from http://www.sony.com/:
© 2005 Sony Corporation of America
Notice the 'of America' part at the end.
I like the idea of patenting inventions alright (I myself have some designs I would like to patent), but I would dearly like to see patents for things that would make one go "Wow! I would never have thought to do it that way" or "Damn! She must've spent months coming up with that design".
That is the nonobviousness requirement, more or less. Basically, to be patentable, an invention must not have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art, at the time it was made. Obviously, inventions that are obvious in hindsight might still be patentable.
Oh, and the degree of labor is irrelevant; who actually cares if someone comes up with an invention after months or years of labor, or in a single flash of insight?
Also, patenet claims SHOULD also include proof that the design wasn't come upon independently and without using any of the claimers work. Patents are supposed to protect against unfair use of one's hard work and effort. If it's their own, it doesn't matter which came first.
This is completely wrong. It doesn't matter whether someone independently invents something; it can still infringe. Patents are broad that way. Plus, given that they're all disclosed in publicly viewable records, it's not the fault of the inventor if you didn't look through them to see what had been invented and patented already.
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
Sony filed an appeal and apparently got a stay on the injunction that would have forced them to stop selling their consoles and infringing software. You can read about it here.
8-10 years?
A JD is typically acquired in 3 years. I got mine in 2 1/2 by going to summer school. Some people take night classes and get their degrees in 4 years.
I'd probably be a bit afraid of someone who worked 8-10 years on their JD. (Frankly, that's a long time for a JD, LLM, and SJD together!)
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
"Didn't the Rumble Pack come out in 1996? I guess that might not violate these patents (I never owned one, anyone who does...does it have more than one speed?)"
The Rumble Pak was a seperate unit that had to be plugged into the controller. Nintendo won that battle because of that key difference.
"Derp de derp."
For the record,
I have a Logitech "3D Mouse" I bought in 1995 to play Descent and experiment with a cheap (~$50) Six-Degrees-of-Freedom input device for a VR-related project I was working on in college.
It also had a crude feedback mechanism that was licensed from Immersion that was just like the dualshock's offset-balast on a DC-motor with a simple motor speed control. Great device despite it having a slow RS232 interface. Anyway... Immersion was in devices being used for gaming atleast as early as 1995, perhaps even as early as 1994. The patent reference for the "interactive feedback device" is "Patent Pending"...
So, your claim of frivolous patent claim sniping is a bit off-base. The 2000/2001 dates you reference could be the dates of official patent number filing/issuance. Also it is not uncommon for a patent developer to re-file addenda or refinements to patents they have already put in for review if the addenda do not change the nature of the patented item from its original filing.
Immersion had a booth at the Spring 1995 VR Expo mini-con that was held in NYC. I was there. Besides context-variable vibration feedback they also had sample devices using directional linear-bumping feedback using small, variable current solenoids. They're legit...
What's worse in this typical knee-jerk Slashdot goon response that I'm seeing all over this topic is that a JUDGE in a COURT held a protracted HEARING with a lot of EVIDENCE and FACTS in the case and came to an >>INFORMED decision. But one look at the news in the U.S. and one can see that the idea of and respect for the judiciary process is completely lost on most people (including many folks in the legislative domain).
youareaclown,
peace,
and carrots,
Levendis47
--==[ AOL YIM ICQ : Levendis47 : levendis47@yahoo.com ]==--
If you read Immersion's site, it says they licensed the technology for their Gamecube wheel controller. Not for their normal Gamecube controller.
Look, Q*Bert had a vibrator/shaker in it long before Immersion was around. Airplanes sent vibration through rudder pedals to indicate stalls before that. Let Immersion have their patents on fancy force feedback, they didn't invent vibration as a method of communicating information to a person.
No, majority shareholders can't do things like that since minority shareholders also have protected rights as well. Sony would need to buy out the company or it would face shareholder lawsuits and possible SEC sanctions if it tried to buy 51% of the company and drop the lawsuit.
"When you sit with a nice girl for two hours, it seems like two minutes. When you sit on a hot stove for two minutes, it
Yep.
You can hack a male USB connector onto the cord of an Xbox controller, and it will work just fine with any USB input. Getting the proper wires soldered together can be a little difficult if the cable end has some funky wire colors, but it's pretty easy to do otherwise.
The patent was file in 2000.
e mium6DOF.asp
But in 1996 I played with exactly the same kind of haptic technology (or called force feedback) before. It was called Phantom (tm) used in scientific apps:
http://www.sensable.com/products/phantom_ghost/pr
For example you can put on a finger thimble and feel a virtual 3D surface.
I even wrote an SGI program to use it as a flight cnotrol device.
jpenguin AT the google email service
Did you bother to read these patents? No. Do you know what you're talking about? No. Should anyone rely upon the lay opinion of a game designer when it comes to the workings of a patent system? Read on...
Heck, they patented force feedback over a computer network (6,859,819), last month, 2005. Isn't this what cybersex was supposed to be all about? Wasn't there already teledildontics at that point?
Wasn't there already teledildontics AT WHAT POINT?
If you were a patent attorney and you'd actually bothered to read the patent, then you would have noticed the following:
This is a Continuation application of prior U.S. application Ser. No. 09/153,784, filed on Sept. 16, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,101,530, which is a Continuation application of prior application Ser. No. 08/691,852 filed on Aug. 1, 1996 now U.S. Pat. No. 5,956,484, which is a continuation-in-part of prior application Ser. No. 08/571,606, filed on Dec. 13, 1995, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,219,032, which is a Continuation-in-Part of prior application Ser. No. 08/566,282, filed Dec. 1, 1995, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,734,373, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
I.E. the patented claims have a priority date of, at the latest, 1996 and at the earliest, late 1995. If you'd read the patents, then you'd also have noticed that the specification (everything except the claims and the "header" to the patent) is identical to the one filed August 1, 1996. They may not even have relied on that additional material, so that the support for their patent claims is found in the original patent application filed December 1, 1995.
It's not so easy to claim that the 2005 patent was rediculous almost 10 years ago, is it? Never mind that we haven't even read and discussed the patent claims. Instead, we're making snap judgments based on the title of a patent, because that IS a simple concept.
No.
This particular patent APPLICATION was filed in 2000.
The original patent disclosure, which this particular patent quotes verbatim, and which sets the priority date for patentability, was filed in... let's read from the patent:
This is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/066,608 filed Apr. 24, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,088,017 which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08,565,102 filed Nov. 30, 1995, abandoned.
November 30, 1995. So, even if the patent claimed every aspect of force feedback that any human being will ever contemplate for all time, what you were playing with and writing in 1996 means bupkiss.
By the way, did you read the patent claims? Did the Phantom(tm) do exactly what was claimed? I sincerely doubt it, since Sony hired a team of lawyers that, as part of their defense of the case, combed through everything that they and the Sony engineers in force feedback development could think of to discover material that could be used to invalidate the patent.
Every button except for the dpad, start & select button has 256 levels of sentitivity including the black and white buttons. I have just cut up my pad and am using it as a usb joypad on my pc. For more info on it google for XBCD.
If it was a scam, wouldn't you think that a good set of lawyers would be able to litigate out that point?
No, you wouldn't. The patent system has genuine holes in it that allow companies to abuse it, and there is not a damned thing even the smartest lawyer can do about it.
When a smaller business gets infringed by a global, unlimited funds company that is trying to stay ahead of innovation and still make a quarterly report that has enourmous expectations, then you call foul?
Well, I think what one calls it should depend on the details of the patent. I don't know the details of this patent, but I do know that this company did not invent force feedback, not even in game controllers. So, the question is: can you make a good argument for why their patent should be valid? What is the actual novelty contained in their patent? Those are, in fact, I think the first questions we should ask when a patent gets litigated; it's an unfortunate error in our patent system that patents are automatically presumed valid and enforceable when granted.
I used to be a game journalist, and when the Rumble Pak first came out, a lot of gamers wondered why Nintendo didn't make a controller with vibration functions built in - especially after the PS1 DualShock appeared. The word from Nintendo back then was that someone had a patent on FF in a controller - but an extra device that plugged into a controller wasn't covered by the patent.
What that means for Nintendo now with the GC controller and this case, I don't know.
You must think in Russian.
Actually, wouldn't many of the original gun games (I seem to recall a certain game in the student union back in the late 80s or early 90s that had an UZI that you pointed at the screen to aim and when you pulled the trigger it shook. Or more recent gun-games where the gun is connected by a cord and the gun still shook?
The problem is about HOW the controller shakes. Open up an XBox controller or the like and you'll find a small electric motor with an off-center hunk of metal on the shaft. There's a pair, one with a smaller and one larger hunk, and they each shake independantly or together to provide small, medium and large shaking.
The patents have to do with shaking by offset hunks of metal on rotating shafts. If the rumble-packs that Nintendo had don't fit that description, then they don't violate these patents. Plain and simple.
... "I read part of it all the way through." -- Movie Mogul Sam Goldwyn (and some slashdot readers)
Someone else mentioned that Nintendo uses a different approach to rumble (the unbalanced weight is inside the motor, not attached to it).
Additionally, Nintendo patented the GC controller as a continuation of the RumblePak patent.
This application is a continuation of application Ser. No. 09/250,160, filed Feb. 16, 1999, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,200,253 which is a continuation of application Ser. No. 08/727,239, filed Oct. 8, 1996, now U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,437. The contents of the prior applications are incorporated by reference herein.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
So Nintendo has a patent for an external rumble device, and the GC controller is an extension of this patent?
;)
Presumably this means the GC controller is a rumble pack with a joypad built-in rather than a joypad with rumble built-in...
To buy 51% of a company, you need 51% of the shareholders to be willing to sell to you. The share price quoted on the stock exchange is actually the price of a very small percentage of a company's shares, those that people are currently trying to sell.
The other people will only sell their shares when they are happy with the price offered, they are under no obligation to sell at the stock exchange price.
As soon as it becomes clear that someone is trying to buy a large number of shares, supply and demand kicks in, and the price starts to rise, and everyone becomes a lot less keen to sell, since they now own an investment that is rapidly increasing in value, which makes it very, very expensive to purchase a company this way.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
People have already raised this argument and, guess what?
1) The patent was filed in 1995. Patent protection begins with filing, not granting.
2) Nintendo licensed the technology from the patent holder.
Clear, Dark Skies