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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
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
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
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Links to the patents: 6,424,333, 6,275,213.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
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.
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
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.
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.
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 ]==--
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
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
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.
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.