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."

Comments

Hopefully we see more of this

[baffled]

It's probably the best bet for patent reform to be taken seriously.

This is the patent office's fault

[RobK]

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.

Re:Prior art?

[Smidge204]

Right now, it only seems that these cases will show if the accused party actually infringes on the patent or not.

What we need, as part of patent reform, is the ability to call BS on a patent during these lawsuits, which puts the infringement claim on hold until the patent itself is reviewed and debated over. Start a seperate court case to review the patent, with both parties able to produce evidence and expert testimony about the technology in question. If the patent is ruled bogus, then it should be invalidated on the spot and the infringement suit dropped.

That would cull a lot of bogus patents and maybe discourage filing them in the first place.
=Smidge=