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Nintendo Loses Controller Patent Lawsuit
kryogen1x alerts us to coverage at 1up indicating that Nintendo controller may soon become scarce — Nintendo lost in court to Anascape over analog sticks in their Wii and GameCube controllers.This isn't the first time the big manufacturers have been targeted in lawsuits involving features in their controllers. From the article: "The lawsuit concerns the analog sticks in the Classic Controller and GameCube controllers, which Texas-based Anascape Ltd. claims to hold a patent on that Nintendo violated. The court has ruled in favor of Anascape, and US District Judge Ron Clark has rejected Nintendo's request for a new trial. As a result, Clark said he will put a ban on the sale of the controllers (which includes sales of GameCube systems) starting tomorrow, July 23, unless Nintendo posts a bond or puts royalties into an escrow account."
Hopefully they will redesign their analog sticks. All my analog sticks on my GameCube controllers are very jiggly and have huge nullzones.
You are now manually breathing.
A look at corporate head quarters sheds some additional light on the situation.
I'm sick of following my dreams. I'm just going to ask where they're goin' and hook up with 'em later.
Here is one way to fix the problem: let the Patent Office be heavily penalized for every patent overturned by the courts. If the Office goes bankrupt as a result of its own negligence, too bad, let it die. Congress can always start a new Office with completely different management.
At the moment, the Patent Office is too unaccountable; there is little penalty for doing shoddy work. The threat of bankruptcy might concentrate a few minds over there.
Or it's a case of choosing a venue where the judge knows a patent from a potato, where the magistrates are experienced with patent matters for expedited pretrial proceedings, and where the docket that isn't clogged with federal criminal cases that prevent timely resolution of civil matters. Very little in a patent case is decided by the jury and much of what the jury has power over can be corrected on appeal should the jury err. The Eastern District of Texas (and other "rocket dockets") are popular with plaintiffs because they provide the plaintiff with a predictable litigation timetable. They all appeal to the same place (CAFC) so they all follow the same law and extraordinary jury outcomes will be subjected to the same review.
Sony and Microsoft already payed these guys. They apparently have a pretty good case.
I work in Carson City. There's a lot of money-grubbing, rat-bastard, a$$hole, jerks there, so I can certainly believe that someone there would happily be in on some scheme like this.
As I recall Atari was the first to put the analog controller into my hands. They should be the one's with the patent. Perhaps someone from Atari should sue anascape or who ever the person Patent trolling is.. I also think the penalty for a patent troll should be life without money. Yes take all their cash away and force them to live at the sewer dump.
If you don't consider that prior art then look at the controllers for Radio controlled airplanes and cars. I think Airtronics and Futaba could sue the living shit out of anascape. This goes back to the 60's, My dad had a Heathkit R/C rig that used analog sensors with snap-through tactile feedback... BTW even though the 2600 joystick was in essence digital, all the inputs were read through analog mechanisms.
Between Atari's analog stick from way back and nintendo's analog stick? metal poles vs rubber pads with conductors?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Anascape may be an IP company, but it doesnt mean Brand Armstrongs patents are invalid.
This guy has 32 patents issued to his name.
http://globaldevices.com/
Now the validity of these patents may be called into question. Looking at the patents it doesnt bring to mind submarine patents as much as the question...shouldnt the person who patents something actually be able to demonstrate a working prototype before a final patent is issued not just a paper invention?
... they were only sued in the court that they were because it is notoriously biased in favor of patent trolls.
That's right. TFS and TFA don't mention it, but checking other outlets like Techdirt, the lawsuit was really filed in the district of East Texas which is notorious for awarding big money to the patent trolls.
This is exciting. Brad Armstrong is my good friend Alex's uncle. I actually met him two months ago at a graduation. Brad is a very friendly and interesting guy. Alex says he's been an inventor most of his life and has been screwed out of a lot of patients. He invented the joystick sensitivity function found in Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft controllers. He recently won a lawsuit against the two latter corporations, and now he finally won the third. Interesting... he's now rich, but not as rich as Nintendo.
None of those patents were filed before the N64 was released, so anything that the N64 controller did wouldn't be covered. The snap-through one was filed after the gamecube was released.
based on Microsoft not contesting it. Based on Sony not contesting it.
But that happens all the time. Patent troll starts throwing around a patent, and $BIG_COMPANY gives them a few million dollars up front for a one time license. Then the patent troll takes the money from $BIG_COMPANY and spends it going after $BIG_COMPANY's competitors. Microsoft did exactly this with SCO when the latter company was suing IBM and Novell.
It's a win-win scenario: $BIG_COMPANY doesn't have to worry about having to pay huge royalties if courts uphold the patent, yet it's competitors have to spend millions fighting it.
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Note. I've looked though the patents and there is absolutely nothing non-obvious in them. its all things any reasonably intelligent designer would have come up with.
The classic controller doesn't have rumble, possibly for this very reason (Nintendo saw this patent lawsuit coming). Incidentally neither does the GCN Wavebird controller.
So I'm not sure why the classic controller falls under the patent but the Nunchuk doesn't, unless it's controller with two analogue sticks that are patented.
Anyway, Nintendo can just raise the price of the classic controller in the US or not sell it.