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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."
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
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?
Except that that would mean that companies that could afford $5M easily could intentionally infringe on as many patents as they liked, even drawing the legal battle out long enough to bankrupt the holder.
Good idea. Remember, it's harder to defend a court order preventing a technology from being distributed if the only damages are loss of revenue, which is easy to correct later if it turns out it really infringes a patent. In other words, a "patent"holder will never ABSOLUTELY need the infringement to stop RIGHT NOW.
Also, it would be nice if a patent could be voided on the grounds that it was deliberately worded to obscure similarity to prior art.
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
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.