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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.
Forgive my saying so, but that's the wackiest thing I've ever heard. 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".
There's nothing about the PS/PS2's controller design that would make me think "Patent!"
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.
Idiots.
Perhaps that's exactly what SCO was thinking. IBM and Sony know better - succumb to blackmail once and you're an instant target for others...
That seemed to actually be the goal of Immersion, according to a family member who worked there until recently. They do make some cool stuff such as some really nice force feedback instruments for medical applications, but it seemed like they were horribly mismanaged and simply looking to last long enough to get their money out of SCE and MS and then run.
While $90.7M (US) isn't chump change it less than buying Immersion out.
That doesn't even take into account the mood of the Immersion investors. With licensing deals (either patent or SDK) in place with Microsoft, Nintendo, Logitech, and any other FF peripheral maker out there the investors might be more interested in a long term investment, not a quick buck. Sony's going to have to license Immersion's stuff, as they won't hamstring themselves in the marketplace without a FF controller, so there's more money for the IMMR investors after the $90.7M Sony judgement. I would be surprise if Sony didn't do due diligence and investigate buying IMMR. It just doesn't seem as if it would've worked for them, though.
I eventually take apart every toy I get. I've taken apart dozzens of game controllers, and the first time I opened up a vibrating controller, I saw something I'd seen before. A cheap little DC motor with an unbalanced weight on the rotor. The first time I'd seen this was in the Milton Bradley board game, Operation. The little motor did a pretty good job of making an "electric shock" noise, and the vibration discouraged you from bracing the palm of your hand or other hand on the board while plucking the little bones out. http://www.hasbro.com/operation/
When was this patent granted and would all those "force feedback" effects in various arcade cabinets (e.g. Outrun I know had it) count as prior art or a violation (depending on when the patent was granted)?
Nintendo is not a licensee of Immersion, and as far as I can gather they are not going to be because their rumble controllers do not work the same way as Microsoft's and Sony's. Nintendo is using independently developed technology that does not seem to be covered by Immersion's patents and in fact as far as I can tell predates it.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I'm not a big wallstreet kinda guy, so go easy on me. I have a question:
Couldn't they have only bought 51% of the voting shares, and then drop the lawsuit?
But even a day is too long, so it hasn't been completely stamped out yet. (And won't be, at least until we're all off the planet and the control freaks can inherit the Earth from the meek.)
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
Well, that pretty much confirms it's a scam. The game is to file a vague patent application, continue it by incorporating actual technologies brought into use between the two applications, and use the old application to establish priority.
If it was a scam, wouldn't you think that a good set of lawyers would be able to litigate out that point? Wouldn't you say that Sony might have some of the best damn lawyers in the whole world on the payroll?
Face it, if it was a scam, then Sony would have been able to prove it with their unlimited funding for their all-powerful lawyers. They couldn't. So therefore, it wasn't a scam.
All we ever see is giant corporations abusing patents against other corporations. 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?
Not the best call there my friend.
I for one, don't call bullocks on this one.
http://www.klov.com/game_detail.php?letter=H&game_ id=8072
This good enough for you? The force feedback was primitive but you could feel changes in resistance when turning corners, steering would get soggier when leaving the track. I remember wasting loads of time on this when I was a kid. The date says 1989 but I am sure they were around earlier than that in the UK.
Yeah...I know that Japan isn't in the E.U. That is why I mentioned dollars, euros and yen.
But I was thinking of this as a WORLD-WIDE phenomenon.
The point I was trying to make, was that courts around the world might start to find companies of other nationalities guilty of 'something.' And then slap them with a major fine- hurting the foreign company, and helping their own economy.
No reason to lie.
And yet power steering wasn't obvious enough for them to have put it in the first cars ever built. If it's that simple, give me a list of the things that obviously should be around but aren't.
Now give me the obvious implementation of all these things. Also, just as an excersize, I've like you to provide me with your design for a power steering system.
Your logic is a bit faulty. You're saying since we can see how we like having something once we lose it that anybody could have invented it. That's simply not true. The challenge is being the person to come up with something *before* it's widespread.