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Joystick Port Patented, Now the Lawsuit
Panaqqa writes "It appears that Fenner Investments, a Texas based patent troll, is at it again. This time, they are suing Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for infringing a patent they hold on joystick ports. Perhaps they felt they needed a "Plan B" now that their lawsuit against Juniper Networks, Nokia, Cisco, Alcatel and Ericsson is not going so well."
It's probably the best bet for patent reform to be taken seriously.
someone sue the lawyers bringing up these lawsuits...since they are driving us nuts, and crippling businesses. If there ever was a need for "looser pays" it's because of crap like this.
Wikipedia page on Patent Trolls, with a list that doesn't appear to include the trolls in question guys:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patent_troll
people wonder why does Microsoft patent things... Here ladies and Gentllemen, you have the answer. If you have deep pockets, you better defend yourself.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Haven't poor Microsoft and Sony been vicimized enough?
How's a poor ruthless-megacorporation supposed to make a buck these days?
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The patent was applied for in 1998, I believe the first atari consoles had joysticks in the late 70s, and I'm sure there are earlier examples. The only thing that the patent application seems to have going for it is the specific use of CMOS fabrication for the circuit. This seems to me like making a keyboard out of metal/wood/some other material not usually used, then trying to patent it. Am I missing something, or will this lawsuit go just as well as their previous one?
How the hell did they patent joystick ports when systems with joystick ports had been manufactured and sold for more than 25 years before they even filed?
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Good times, good times....
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
Is it just me or does this speak so clearly to the culture we have developed in the US? The idea that you can only get ahead by suing the pants off of some corporation. It just sounds like this corporation exists only to gather every patent it can get it's hands on and lies in wait for a large company to blunder so they can get rich.
I can't work out what the patent is actually for. Even the abstract is a little vague apart from telling me it's some sort of analogue joystick interface.
This method of digitising a position has been basic instrumentation technology for decades... It's obvious to one skilled in the art... fer hecks sake, my old XT had a joystick card that did this RC timebase measuring thing... and that was back in the 80's I think I might still have the joystick card in my bits box... mind you, I don't think there's been any old 8-bit card interface compatible motherboards made for ages either...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
They're using an integrated circuit to read the voltage differentials, instead of the more common 'clock + voltage comparator'. So yes, I would say this falls under prior art, being that their chip does pretty much what the gameport logic has done since its introduction. And if it doesn't fail on prior art, it fails on the 'obvious' clause.
Indeed!
prior art-ish Applie IIe circuit
0 6.html
http://web.pdx.edu/~heiss/technotes/aiie/tn.aiie.
Whoopie.
Because Fenner's patent used a tristate buffer instead of an open collector NPN transitor they own this kind of joystick?
geesh.
-- 3 events that reshaped the world in the 20th century: WW1, WW2, and WWW
How long until a /.er adds them to the list?
Indeed!
I don't know the exact circuit details but Commodore Amiga joysticks worked in a similar way, i.e. by timing the decay of a capacitor rather then using an a/d converter.
No sig today...
As near as I can tell from the text of the patent, this patent troll has patented the use of an Analog to Digital Convertor for converting the analog output of a joystick into a digital signal. I'm not 100% certain but it sounds like either an integrator type circuit or a PWM type circuit. The intriguing bit is the mentioned use of a VLSI (Very Large Scale Integration) chip as a part of the design. This could mean utilizing any of the large fabric chips from the likes of Altera, TI, or Lord knows how many others are in the market nowadays. Heck, this could be interpreted to include the PIC chips in common use nowadays.
I'd have to look in my old college electronics book (Electronic Communications - vol 5 by Schrader) to see, but I think these types of ADC circuits were discussed even back then (circa 1985). If not, I know the Peavey DECA series of digital power amplifiers (circa 1988) utilized an integrator type ADC for doing converting the analog audio signal to a series of digital pulses (PWM) used for driving the MOSFET finals.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
The fact that these non-novel, obvious patents with prior art are being issued decades after first use.
I understand that business need to protect themselves, and I'm a lot more forgiving of hardware patents (because that make sense) but reading the patent all I see that MIGHT be new is the power saving circuitry rather than a novel joystick connection.
They do need more examiners and the second patent applied for each year should cost twice as much as the first to file. (This would curb blanketing the system hoping that one of them sticks).
This is my theory and it's mine.
From the patent:
Filing date: Jul 10, 1998
Does more really need to be said?
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Their patent applies to analog joysticks. It's a method of sending the information of a joystick's position as a digital pulse, therefore requiring less wiring for multiple analog sticks and buttons. The controller could send the information about the various states of the buttons and joysticks encoded as a digital stream.
Unfortunately for them, they applied for the patent in '98, long after the N64 was released. I don't know for sure, but since the N64 controller only has (IIRC) 3 wires in the cable, they must be using something like what this patent describes.
It's interesting that they applied for the patent two months after the release of the dual-shock controller for the PS1. IMO, someone saw the dual shock and patented the idea on how it would work.
What, me worry?
If they want to defend themselves from this, get patents abolished, don't *pay* to get a patent and make patent trolling more profitable (since the more patents there are, the less they will be looked at).
Especially with the EU, why are MS asking for patents to be avaialble THERE? Surely, even if they are too late in the US, they can ensure that the rest of the world is OK.
Taking this action together with the threats they have made in the past, I suspect that patents aren't a defensice proposition for Microsoft.
These people give Texans a bad name. Is there any way I can mail these creeps a bushel of rotten tomatoes? I probably live too far away to throw them myself.
Since 'Mutually Assured Destruction' doesn't work when defending against a patent troll (they don't produce anything that can infringe your patents), maybe it would be a start to limit the maximum amount of awarded damages to $5M (for example.) If a patent of a legitimate inventor is ever infringed by some big business, the settlement is more than enough for them to retire and continue inventing if they so choose. Wouldn't it however remove the incentive for trolls, spending easily as much as $5M in the hopes of getting awarded $200M?
Then as an encore someone might be able to convince USPTO there isn't such a thing as software patents. Good reading materials: An industry at risk, So Small a Town, So Many Patent Suits
Indeed!
I couldn't find an article on the company in question to link it to, and couldn't be bothered to write one?
Indeed!
Done and done. (And my first attempt at a wikipedia edit)
You would think it was possible to put our nations academic institutions into the patent review loop.
Company applies for patent, patent judge receives comments from university departments focused on that type of technology, judge reviews comments to verify if this is a revolutionary new idea worth granting a patent to or not.
I also liked the suggestion that the cost of patenting scale up the more patents one files within a given timeframe. This should keep a company from essentially conducting a "denial of patent review" attack by filing so many similar patents that the academics will simply give up participating in the system.
I would also like to see some sort of financial pentalty applied to corporations who attempt to patent existing work. In this case, if the court finds the patent should never have been granted, I would accompany the dismissal of their lawsuit with a hefty fine. Force companies to conduct solid research instead of just filing some paperwork and seeing what they can slip through the system.
I believe that my usb port works as a joystiq port on my computer. So I believe that usb is the next to go.
Given the Wii and the PS3 are standard wireless, how does that lawsuit work again? With base-model 360s?
The U.S. Patent Office has such a procedure -- its called "reexamination." "Inter parties" reexamination allows two parties (the patentee and an accused infringer) to "reexamine" a patent before the USPTO in view of new prior art. If the USPTO agrees with the accused infringer, it can invalidate the patent. Lawsuits regarding patents in reexamination are commonly stayed (i.e. put on hold) until the reexamination terminates.
Reexams often result in dubious patents being invalidated. The reason you do not read about them more often on /. is that the purported prior art is often grossly exaggerated by the accused infringer (as in the RIM/NTP patent case), so there may not actually be sufficient grounds to invalidate the patent.
I don't get it. This looks like the description of a standard Atari game controller port (from the late 70s), except, instead of TTL voltages, they're using CMOS voltages. I think a change like this would be obvious to a layman in the field. Heck, I have little to do with electronics, yet I could have come up with this.
Doesn't mean that they can't harrass and shake down a few companies. But it seems like an awfully weak claim.
This exact circuit was used in the Apple II in 1977. Copied by IBM in the IBM PC in 1981. May have been used prior to this. This circuit is so common they had to know that this was used many years ago. If I were a defendant in this case I would counter sue claiming they knowingly patented something that was in common use without disclosing the prior art just so they could intimidate companies. This a fraud on the patent office!
Huh! I, once again, saw this infamous "Patent Pending" icon at the right top corner of the Slashdot article, and I was wondering, what it was about this time. Patent issues have always been so complicated for my simple mind. But then, after clicking on "Read more", and saw this 30 year old ATARI joystick below the Patent icon, and everything became clear!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Here is an idea. Lets take out a patent on patenting prior art and suing for infringment. This is allowed as a business method patent. Then when companies do what this company is doing, we sue them for patent infringment.
Y'know, a lot of the posts in this comment section seem to be of the type "well, there's this prior art out there so there's no way a patent should have issued!"
That being said, ultimately, it is the responsibility of the patent examiner to determine whether or not the claims of the patent are indeed patentable (useful, novel, nonobvious, etc.). However, don't blame the patent examiner. These poor souls are overworked and underpaid, and the backlog for many applications awaiting examination nowadays are in the 3-5 years range. For example, if you look at the public PAIR information for this particular patent here, you'll see that this particular application (App. No. 09/113,503) was initially assigned to group art unit 2635. In general, art unit 2600 is really swamped.
So, what can you do? Rather than bitchin' and moanin' that the patent system of the U.S. is "broken," become a patent examiner! Take a look at a partial list of employment opportunities here and apply! If you want a faster link, here's the actual Patent Examiner Employment Application.
So, do your civic and scientific duty today and join the ranks of the PTO!
There were joystick interfaces on storage tube terminals, such as Tektronix or the ARDS, back in the late 1960s.
Back in the 1970s - 1980s, 8-bit computers used to measure the resistance of a joystick potentiometer using this setup:
One end of the joystick pot (VR1) is connected to the main logic supply voltage (1). The slider (3) is connected to a capacitor (C1). The other terminal of the capacitor is earthed. The junction (3) of the variable resistance and capacitor is connected via a safety resistance (R1) to a logic input (4) on IC1. An open-collector logic output is also connected to this input. To take a reading the O/C output is driven low to discharge C1, then allowed to float. At some later moment in time, the capacitor will have charged to the point where the voltage at (4) exceeds its input threshhold and the input will read as a "1". By measuring the time which elapses between the forcible discharging of C1 and the triggering of the input, we can determine the unknown resistance between (1) and (3), and thus the position of the joystick.
Even the IBM PC used this technique when a joystick port was added! Right up to the days when USB became standard for PC joysticks, every PC had a 15-pin DIN connector (colour: mustard) with four such inputs plus some switch inputs. The Atari 9-pin DIN joystick port (which would eventually go on to become a de facto standard) featured two resistance inputs which were normally used by the paddle controllers, but (because, if fitted with a simple pull-up resistance and the O/C output is left open, they are switch inputs) became the extra mouse buttons on the Amiga. All this was done long enough ago that, had any patent ever covered it (which is frankly pretty unlikely; the idea of determining an unknown resistance by using it in an oscillator and measuring the period of said oscillator should be obvious to anyone who knows how to wire a 13 amp plug, let alone an "expert" in the field), it would certainly have expired by now.
The circuit goes something like this; Note also that this method was not universal. The BBC computer used a 12-bit A-D converter (mapped to the upper 12 bits of a two-byte word), with the tracks of the pots between a reference supply and ground; the Dragon 32 used a 6-bit ADC formed from a DAC (also used, via an analogue DUX, for cassette and audio output!) and comparator.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
And it's gone again... I was looking for the edit but couldn't find it; it's been deleted again with a reference to the talk page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Patent_troll#Fen ner_Investments
Good luck next time!
(PS it wasn't me)
We need a 'use it or lose it' mentality to patents. If you patent a new type of mouse and it's 7 years later and somebody else is selling these mice and you haven't done shit with yours... then too bad so sad. This will eliminate these patent trolls.
nothing
Nitnendo has patents on all there ports and connecters so how would this tandup against that ?
This is good stuff.. Patent trolls don't have the kind of money needed to buy congressmen. And, the deep pocketed companies they are after surely do. So, hopefully this continues, and those big companies get the congressmen they control to reform the patent system.
Jeez people were using joysticks in the 70's.
They should sue the US Airforce for using joysticks in fighter planes. Maybe some pilot will get angry and press the launch button to solve the whole problem once and for all...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Please file a patent lawsuit against IBM so we don't have to deal with your trolling anymore.
Best Regards,
The World
but I haven't heard any explanation of how they might be implemented. Say you want to see a common sense reform like, "You can't patent a business process" or "You can't patent something you've never created". How would that reform happen? Do we just hope the SCOTUS intervenes, making a ruling during a case which has ramifications for other cases? Would the Congress need to pass a bill laying out such a reform? Is there anything we can do as citizens to push things in the right direction?
The only thing I can think of is to patent a method of "Reducing and preventing severe head pain, through the application of a system which regulates the velocity of any high density object as it approaches the cranial system. The forumla for the appropriate approach is F=MA, where F is less than painful"; and then suing the patent trolls for infringement. Of course, I wouldn't settle out of court; I'd demand an immediate cease-and-desist.
Not smashing yourself over the head with blunt objects? Hey... that's *my* idea!
How can you patent something that was around atleast 20 years before you applied for the patent? Yes a reform is needed.
SimonTek
Not because the work is too much or burn-out but that the USPTO *management* doesn't want what is needed. If I were to turn up I would be sacked because I'd look at the patent and see if I can create the product so patented. If I couldn't from the description, I'd fail it: not specific enough. If I didn't see any benefit for the public in the patent (e.g. one-click shopping, where you CANNOT use trade secret so what is the alternative if the patent fails? Still use it. Loss: Nil).
After a few weeks (maybe months) I would be sacked for refusing too many patents.
====
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The Alliance provides legislative counsel, congressional updates and strategy development to its members through a number of vehicles. Additionally, through its speaker's bureau, Alliance members have an opportunity to provide expert opinion to many of the nation's top-tier business, technology and mainstream media organizations. Over the years its members have testified before Congress, offered counsel to key Senate and House committee members, and successfully pushed legislation to protect America's independent inventors.
Since its inception, the Alliance has grown into one of the most vocal advocates for America's patent system.
Examples of areas of our expertise include David Vs. Goliath patent litigation, patent reform, and we have a unique view of the companies comprising the "Coalition for Patent Piracy".
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President - www.PIAUSA.org - RJR at PIAUSA.org
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Direct (202) 318-1595 - 9 am to 9 pm EST.
From my inspection of the patent, it appears that their "invention" is supposed to allow a joystick which operates with a 5 V supply to interface to a circuit which does not operate on a 5 V supply.
This isn't just obvious, it's necessary! Anyone even half-assed skilled in the art would know that you need to do something to connect a 5 V TTL output to a 3.3 V LVTTL input.
Okay, so maybe their something is novel or nonobvious. In fact, it's neither; they're using a tri-state buffer's threshold voltage as a comparator.
Basically, digital logic circuits can have any manner of analog voltages applied to them. Circuit designers specify these voltages as Vil (voltage input low threshold) and Vih (voltage input high threshold). Any input voltage below Vil will generate an digital output voltage below Vol (voltage output low), which is usually interpreted as logic 0. Any input voltage above Vih will, correspondingly, generate a voltage above Voh, which is usually interpreted as logic 1.
They specify that their buffer has hysteresis, so that way it won't suffer from the metastability that usually occurs when you feed a digital circuit an input voltage between Vil and Vih.
Keep in mind that these components are all COTS (common-off-the-shelf) parts.
They just drain a capacitor, which causes the input of the buffer to go below Vil, so the buffer outputs a logic 0, which raises a PCin bit (whose voltage level is not the 5V joystick level), let the capacitor charge through the potentiometer whose resistance is proportional to the current joystick position (which cap is being charged by a 5V supply), and when the charging capacitor exceeds Vih of the input buffer, the buffer outputs a logic 1, causing the PCin bit to go low again.
There's some miscellaneous stuff about resetting, the order in which to apply signals to make the process work, etc. But, basically, the whole patent is bollocks.
I also like how they have a small piece in their patent filing about how those skilled in the art will see obvious ways to modify their patent's invention, and that these modifications are still "in the spirit" of what the patent covers and are thus covered by the patent.
:(){
The claims are all describing the old "dumb" analog PC joystick. The claims specifically describes the joystick as being dependent on a processor on the other side of the interface to perform the procedure of measuring the position of the joystick. Ignoring the scads of prior art for this type of joystick, all modern consoles with analog sticks and all USB joysticks have some form of integrated processor that performs the procedure described in the claims before anything goes out over the interface. Even if the patent were valid there can be no valid claim of infringement for any modern hardware.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
This patent is a monopoly on something obvious. No, it's not quite a "patent on the joystick port" if you read it (but don't read it, if you read it they could get triple damages!) (amigas and other platforms had analogue and digital joysticks in the 1980s of course, so it would be instantly invalidated if that was all it was).
However, it is still neither non-obvious nor particularly inventive, to the people whose opinion should count (of course, the people whose opinions count in the USA are MBAs, PHBs, Lawyers and just about anyone other than engineers!).
Asking USPTO folk to judge patent novelty is a bit like those stereotypical primitives on a tropical island who are wowed by the god-like power of motor boats and airplanes. People judging the validity of patents are, almost necessarily, unqualified: the people who would be qualified either detest patents (most engineers, not just in software, btw) or can earn far more actually working as engineers or both. So you end up with, well, weenies, in charge of handing out 20 year monopolies.
Thanks for providing the link to the talkback. I didn't even know that part existed. After reading the entry I saw that the only problem with my entry was that it should have linked to the Slashdot article that included the phrase "patent troll" in the submission. I've resubmitted with that change and expect it to stay up. Quite a learning experience but it was about time I started learning about Wikipedia since so many people are starting to use it. Like many new technologies, I have to learn it, but I don't have to like it. :P
anyone else notice the assignee of the patent as Lucent?
but not in a good sense.
An explanation for those who don't want to read the patent:
An anlog joystick is pretty much a variable resistor. In order to convert this into a digital domain, the resistance must be measured. We know that the resistor itself can be used to change the discharge time of a capacitor -- this is common. Meauring the discharge time means determining the time the capacitor goes from one voltage to a lower voltage. Which, by its very nature is a "pulse".
And this patent seems to cover all such interfaces in the "joystick" domain.
Now, I can come up with alternate methods for reading the resistance. First one (off the top of my head), is to use a series of resistors controlled by a latched value to produce a reference voltage which is then sent through the joystick resistance. The final output is run through a gate which triggers at a reference voltage. Via search, we can determine the target joystick resistance. (I would probably use a binary search). But this is not any where NEAR as simple or obvious as the R-C approach.
Now, the R-C approach has been used for other variable resistors (prior to 1998) -- the "joystick" application is the only new thing. I used it myself in the 80's. Just never for a joystick (not being into gaming). Its main benefits are that it needs only a single input pin and the circuit is simple. But, given those constraints it is obvious.
Oh well -- go patent trolls. Sure glad I am not in the US.
Just another "Cubible(sic) Joe" 2 17 3061
From the patent:
"The invention being thus described, it will be obvious to one skilled in the art that the same may be varied in many ways. Such variations are not to be regarded as a departure from the spirit and scope of the invention, and all such modifications are intended to be included within the scope of the following claims."
How in the world did that get patented? Anything that's kind of like this is also part of the patent?
Other patents I've seen require detail down to the bit level.
There's got to be something in the prosecution history that would shed more light on this.
That said, you've got to wonder about the company that's trying to sue Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo. They should have gone after a few small companies first to build a precedent.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Not true. The infringer can easily move the money to keep that from happening. Later the infringer goes bankrupt.
In fact, Novell is now making that point with regard to SCOX. While SCOX is not making money off of a patent, it does involve license revenue, and the point remains that an infringer can get away with it to the point that there is no money to recover after the fact.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
I may think the patents should be thrown out, but at least this time the targets are companies that deserve the grief of dealing with the lawsuits. Perhaps one of them will sue the USPTO for malfeasance. (That's probably not possible, but I can dream.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Bingo! This patent troll is going to loose. The Atari 2600, 7800, Commodore 64, and the Nintendo Entertainment System and many had Joystick ports. The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainmen t_System was out years before that patent was filed. So sense prior "art" exists, then they do not have a leg to stand on!
Personally I think that if a patent is found (In court) that it is not valid, it should be taken from the patent whores and givin to the Public Domain.
I wonder if it is possible to file for a patent, and donate it to the public domain directly. Then "Patent Heros" could file for simple, and basic patents, and then just give them to the public, where they belong!
Seems like it would be pretty simple to release a patent to PD. But, then, this is the government we're talking about here. Simple is a dirty word to them. It takes an obscene amount of time just to give them money.
120 characters for a sig? That's bloody useless.
Check micro-80 for prior art discussing the pros and cons of analog and digital joysticks on TRS-80 model 1s. Pre dates Atari, IBM, etc.
Few things to point out here. 1) I don't know who filed the infringement on this patent. 2) I am one of the inventors of this patent (DLPotts from Royersford, PA). I have no idea how they expect this to fly in court. Why? The idea of the patent directly ties to JOYSTICK PORTS on PC's, and NOTHING else. The Joystick port on the PC is a 5volt open collector port that uses sampled time to determine if the potentiometer has moved or not. Eventually the semiconductors involved dropped to 3.3 volt and thus the Joystick port would not function any more. The Patent reflects how the port had to be modified to accept a current joystick (ones designed to run on 5 volt) and still be accurate. The idea behind the design was not to stop people from inventing a low voltage joystick such as Nintendo, Sony and MS have done, but a way to use the (then current) joysticks in future systems. Since none of the game consoles involved actually use "PC JOYSTICK" ports (they have created their own ports), and they are not interfacing to the analog PC joysticks of the time; there is no way that this would ever stand up in court. I would also like to give a shout out to Jalil Fadavi of this patent too; he lost his battle to cancer a few months back.. He was a great man.
...insert Rod A into Slot B? Weren't there electrical outlets before joystick ports? We could go back to creation and argue the original patent for inserting Rod A into Slot B could be awarded to God.
Actually, they're measuring the charge time of the capacitor. If you look in their patent app at the circuit diagram, you see a tri-state buffer whose input is attached to ground - that's how they force a discharge of the cap.
Then, they let the cap charge up through the variable resistor of the joystick, and once it crosses Vih of the input buffer, said buffer outputs a logic 1.
You're still right in spirit, though.
:(){
The reason DACs were cheaper is because it's actually really simple to build a DAC. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resistor_Ladder Those R-2R resistor ladders can be built for ridiculously cheap.
DACs actually the basis of modern SAR (Successive-Approximation Register) ADCs.
With a SAR ADC, you do a binary search with a comparator and a DAC against the analog input voltage by using the DAC to successively approximate the analog input voltage. So you use the DAC to output 1/2 of the max, and a comparator then decides whether it's above or below. You store the result in a register, and then move to within a 1/4 of the target voltage, and store the comparator result. Repeat until you have a full binary number.
Higher order ADCs are just a function of better comparators and DACs. Back in the day, it was kind of expensive to have all this digital logic in a circuit (with the registers and comparators and the state machine to control all this).
:(){
The patent was filed in 1998. The joystick has been around much longer than that. The clerk in the patent office that took the
application should be fired, and the filee should be banned from trolling for existing inventions and filing a patent on them
I was one of the first kids to own an atari 2600. I was a paper boy back then I bought it with my own money earned.
That unit had an analog joystick. This damn joystick patent should be trashed.
Who was the IDIOT that approved this patent?
However this peice still isnt really that big of a deal, because motherboards still need to do a pretty similar trick for the rest of the 5 volt parts out there (keyboard and mouse ports). This patent moves the problem around a bit, and might be a little cheaper in hardware implemantation, but its pretty far from being non-obvious. Anyway, this wasnt a problem back when the CPU was running at 5 volts, just when they dropped down to 3.3.. or 3.465 for the history nerdistas..
Storm
it was digital, actually.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Maybe if they filed the patent in the early 1970's they may have something but I would have been surprised if 1970's arcade joysticks used high voltage (a shocking experience otherwise). Basically the patent reads like what a second year University Electrical Engineering student back in the mid to late 1970's would do to get a few extra marks in a digital control theory project. Even back in the early 1960's 3V and 5V (in the patent) was commonly used for digital applications and I have seen much more sophisticated digital control systems even back then. Look at any electronics manual or cookbook from the 1970's (some still relevant today) and you will see how stupid this is.
This is a patent troll if ever I saw one, unfortunately lawyers who will prosecute or defend the pending case will most likely have no idea what a resister, capacitor, inductor or even an integrated circuit is, not to mention what Electrical Engineering people were taught back in the 1960's and 1970's. Of course if you touch on transistors, FETS and (shock!) valves maybe their brains will explode possibly putting them (patent lawyers) up for a Darwin Award.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.
From the patent:
9. A processor based system, comprising:
a processor;
a joystick device having a first source voltage; and
an interface interfacing said joystick device with said processor, said interface including,
a Resistor-Capacitor (RC) network, connected to the joystick device, said RC network having a capacitor that generates an analog joystick position measurement signal; and
an interface circuit having a second source voltage that is lower than the first source voltage, including
a buffer circuit, in a first operation mode of said interface, receiving said analog joystick position measurement signal, outputting a first logic state as a digital signal before said analog joystick measurement signal exceeds said predetermined threshold, and outputting a second logic state as said digital signal after said analog joystick measurement signal exceeds said predetermined threshold, and
a pulse generator generating a pulse based on said digital signal in said first operation mode of said interface, a width of said pulse representing a coordinate position of said joystick device, and outputting said pulse to said processor, wherein the capacitance value of said capacitor is a function of said predetermined threshold that prevents deviation of the width of said pulse from expected values.
As has been mentioned on a few posts above, this relates to performing a low voltage analog response and this claim doesn't require a manual input joystick.
This is from IP Australia http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/about/jobspatsalary. shtml the salary for patent examiners is disappointing, from the site
As an Examiner of Patents your starting salary in February 2007 will be in the range of $44,350 to $56,320. Currently the employer contribution to the default superannuation fund (PSSAP) is 15.4%.
I can only assume US salaries are comparable for examiners. Starting salaries for a programmer would be at least $50K, $80K for a senior developer, $100+ for a consultant, so in IT I have no idea why anyone would be a patent examiner, unless you're just starting out, and really who would want a new graduate to examine patents? Though it perhaps would be a nice semi-retirement job.
Maybe one way to do it would be to for senior developers to work on a part time basis, or even short term contracts, it would look nice on their cv and would benefit the community. Much like doctors and lawyers do pro-bono work. Personally it would be fun to examine a few patents in my spare time.