Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
Does this mean that vibrators are now infringing on their patent? They vibrate, and they are used in various games I play.
Muaha.
Yeah I bet that was a Dualshock.
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.
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.
" 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!
Here's what gamespot has to say on this.
You can't take the sky from me...
My car vibrates depending on road conditions and engine RPM,
Would this not be "vibration for tactile feadback"? it's 15years old, so I bet it's prior art....
Less look fast, more go fast.
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?
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/
I think it's time to invent Godwin's law part II, "any conversation held long enought in Slashdot will inevitably end with someone comparing the whole matter to SCO or Microsoft, and it will mark the end of the conversation for reasonable people"
Links to the patents: 6,424,333, 6,275,213.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
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)?
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.
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
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...
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
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
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
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.
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.