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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.
Would it not have been easier for Sony to acquire the [Immersion Corp.] company before this mess happened?
from the you'd-think-they'd-have-thought-that-through dept.
You can say that again.
Not sure if this was because of too much confidence on Sony's end, but generally this would be the perfect example of a case worth settling out of court.
back when they first invented it, it was most likely something amazing and kick ass.
Small potatoes.
Why is slashdot posting a lawsuit of this magnitude but failing to post anything about the world famous (and more relevant) Lexar Lawsuit worth over $460 million and will cause a massive disruption in the supply/demand equations currently applied to the significantly growing flash USB key and card memory market?
Your ignorance is infinitely greater than you realize.
I don't think removing a motor with a bit of lead attached will break any games
I can't think of a title where the vibration is necessary for the gameplay.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
" If this doesn't prove the US Patent system needs some overhauling, then I don't know what does. Hopefully this will get the big corporations involved in changing patent law, but for the better?"
No it just proves that:
1-Slashdotters don't read the patent.
2-Slashdotters favour a knee-jerk response.
3-Slashdotters don't care about one and two...so there, NYAH!
A controller that vibrates isn't exactly a logical thing. Sure, many things that seem obvious NOW were at one time clever inspiration on the part of people, which then had to undertake considerable time and expense to bring to market.
It's one thing to even think of something, and its a whole other to design and ramp up a feasible way of manufacturing and selling such an invention.
The patent is completely valid and numerous manufacturers have licensed it for their use. Sony should've settled out of court.
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do you have access to information that we dont? Please share. In almost every one of these kinds of cases the company that holds the patent does in fact go to the company and attempts to get them to license it. In almost every one of these kinds of cases, the company does in fact license the patent unless for some reason their lawyers think they can get out of it.
Apparently sony thought they could, immersion sued, and the judge ruled that immersion was right.
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This means basically nothing.
Is Sony notorious for infringing upon patents?
Sony's notorious for being retarded, but I expect they'll ultimately win this case. They should be able to show tons of prior art in this case. See my previous post.
Life is too short to proofread.
The buttons on the Xbox controller ARE also pressure sensitive to varying degrees. (As for the range of this sensitivity, I am unsure...and the black/white buttons do not appear to have it). The rear triggers on the Xbox controller are also fully analog axes, not the button arrangement you have on the Playstation controllers. I personally care for the Xbox S controller. I use the standard S and the Joytech Neo-S...both sturdier and more comfortable than any of the PS1/PS2 controllers I have. Why mention that you go to the gym with regards to the weight of the Xbox controller? It may be your personal preference to like the reduced weight, but suggesting the Xbox controllers require a good workout to pick up is slightly daft ;)
Nice weather for penguins...
Is the truth now regarded as flamebait?
Yes, 99 percent of the time you could substitute -1 Flamebait with +1 Truth. However, he might have avoided that moderation if he put his point across a little more eloquently.
As for the idea that Xbox controllers are designed exclusively for Halo, that's as much as a gross exaggeration as 'Halo is the only good game for the Xbox'. Yes, playing Halo with the Xbox feels bloody comfortable and natural, but I don't know how this equates to it being unusable for every other game, however. Come on, the differences between the three console controllers aren't that radical; look at which fingers are assigned to which buttons/pads/sticks and it's mostly spatial alignment and positioning that varies.
Funnily enough, I quite like the original Xbox controller and it's only second to the DC one.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
To sum up your quote, they didn't patent force feedback, they've patented having a sensor to make sure that your force feedback doesn't push too hard. And this is not a logical extension of force feedback because...? Just because it uses intentionally complicated language doesn't mean that the concept isn't simple.
/. rhetoric. Some of the things they've patented are obvious extensions of the existing idea, and some have just mountains of prior art. Most are of the "with X" kind of patent, where they patent pretty much daily activities "with force feedback."
That's probably not what they're fighting over, though. It's probably one of the volumes of other patents that Immersion has recieved. Let's look at a random one, shall we? 6,563,487 describes using force feedback on the D-pad of a controller. It doesn't describe how this is any different than using force feedback on a button, but there it is. There is also force feedback for a knob (6,636,197) and the terrible idea of the vibrating touchpad (6,429,846). I guess that compliments their vibrating Laptop (6,822,635).
Hey, here is one... (6,693,622) a patent for a vibrating mass inside of a controller, granted on February 17, 2004. 2004? Was the patent examiner in a cave? Every console shipped with vibrating controllers years before this, in exactly the manner they describe.
There is mounds of prior art for a lot of this. The kickback in the guns in POW. Battletech centers. The wheel feedbacks in arcade and home games such as Hard Drivin', etc, etc.
The patent system is broken. This is not just
We need to stop allowing patents of ideas, not implementations. A battery would be the perfect example of a classic patent, as one would have listed out the copper and various other ingredients that went into it, the chemical reactions that take place, and so on. These days, it would just be listed as "a device that stores electrical charge," and left at that to sue everyone who makes batteries, capacitors, carpets, combs, and anything else that happens to eventually fall under that umbrella.
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?
Though maybe I'm just bitter because I work at a company which made on one of the games on the list. But these patents ring bogus to me, and I applaud Sony's efforts to fight on everybody's behalf.
I'd also like to point out that just because someone has bought a license from SCO doesn't mean SCO has the right to sell a license. Just because Nintendo didn't fight against this doesn't mean that it is valid. And quite frankly, even if it is valid and holds up in court, it's still downright questionable. I'm guessing Immersion just set the cost of licensing the patents at a number smaller than the cost of fighting the patents in court.
The ______ Agenda
Patenting forcefeedback tech is not the same thing as patenting the expression of an idea, there is actual physical hardware involved. Its not "obvious" , there may be prior art but if they invented the technology...more power to them. Just because we dont like the patent doesnt mean its not valid.
Sony is not a helpless babe here, they just have to settle their claim...and pay up some license fees.