Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Sued over Wiimote Trigger
kaizokunami writes "A company named Interlink Electronics, Inc., creator of interface devices has filed a suit in US District court against Nintendo of America, claiming the Nintendo the trigger on the bottom of the Wii controller infringes on their patent. The article includes images submitted with the patent application." From the article: "The complaint alleges that the trigger on the bottom of the Wii controller infringes on Interlink Patent No. 6,850,221 (Trigger Operated Electronic Device), which the company secured on February 1, 2005. Nintendo president Satoru Iwata first presented the Wii controller to the public not too long after that date, during the 2005 Tokyo Game Show."
It's a trigger on the bottom of a controller.
If that's not obvious, what is?
I don't care how you use it, where you put it, whatever. Once a button, always a button.
No Comment.
The only real difference is the shape of the controller, I get the feeling this is going to be thrown off the deep end
FTFA:
Do I think that Nintendo riped these people off? No
Do I think that they are patent Trolls? Probably.
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
There seem to be a lot of innovations in the Wii. If they just pay them off, then I'm sure they're opening the flood gates from lawsuits from all directions. Especially for the trivial stuff that is rather obvious, like this appears to be. I'm willing to bet that motion based interfaces is actually a patent minefield no one has ever forged across before.
How can one possibly be sure that you're not violating anybody's copyright when creating something so complicated as a console system? With thousands of different copyrights protecting hundreds of different idea's, how do you as a company protect yourself from litigation? Assuming Nintendo did not willfully violate the copyright, is there anything they could have done to prevent this, apart from going throught thousands of patents trying to see if what they're doing falls under any one of them?
I think there should be a law where you as a patent holder must warn the company that violated your copyright, at which point that company (Nintendo in this case) can either:
1. Change the design of the device and pay you royalties on the ammount of devices produced with the old design
OR
2. Continue to design the controllers in the same way, but agree on royalties, avoiding any legal costs in the first place.
The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
Um, the patent was filed in 1997 with priority to 1995. Therefore you can erase, Wii, Xbox360, Xbox, Dreamcast, and N64, as established in prior postings.
Now, the NES zapper might be close, but I have to more closely read the claims then my cursory glance. The same for your flightsticks. I will admit there has to be some very close art for it to take almost 10 yrs to get these claims patented.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
Sometimes, you can come up with an idea (putting a button under a device instead of over it) that is so obvious that you don't consider it worthy of your time to apply for a patent. Putting a button on a device is obvious, and *where* on the device you put it really shouldn't matter. Every monitor I've seen have the on/off button on the right-hand side. That doesn't mean I can get a patent on a monitor that has a on/off button on the left.
After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
- The Tao of Programming
Once upon a time, patents were awarded for breakthrough inventions. You know, the stuff that really changed the way the game was played. The original patent system was designed for a small number of those, maybe a couple a year. On that scale, prior art and researching claims by comparing them other other patents works, and at that small number you can expect experts in a field to know the few relevant patents that exist.
But that's been perverted long since, and today you can get a patent for things as ground moving, earth shaking and future creating as the placement of a button on an input device. I'll let the other posters discuss obviousness, I'll just stand here in the corner and shake my head that such trivial nonsense is supported by an artificial exclusive monopoly system. It certainly took years of research to come up with this revolutionary idea, and thousands upon thousands of tries to get the details right, so a patent is surely adequate.
My suggestion for patent system reform: If it obviously took longer to write the patent application than to invent the thing in question, reject and have the applicant pay a fine for the wasted time of the patent office.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'll patent the buttons themselves.
You guys are going to have to come up with new input devices that don't involve small entities with two toggleable states.
No. Does interlink claim to have patented wireless technology? If not, wireless would be a logical extension to an existing idea over time. They created the NES zapper. They created a wireless controller for the GC. At some point they decided to converge the two technologies, and therefore that is not a valid argument.
just some guy
that's just plain retarded, the wireless portion of the controller is simply the logical evolution of the wire and plug previously used. claiming that is a valid basis for a patent is like claiming it's valid to patent "use of a steering wheel" to "control a flying car"
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Well speaking for a majority of Americans I believe I can tell you on their behalf to "go fuck yourself."
I'm amazed that any trigger on game controller could possibly be considered non-obvious at this point. This is just another example of our outdated patent system... Has this company done anything with their government-sponsored patent-monopoly to create a market out of it?