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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."
No webpage, no execuvtive info etc.
Sounds very fishy. Their tatics smells like a kike-controlled operation.
When the government, courts, and congress are controlled by Jews, they are invicible.
The only way to shut them down is to utilize your rights under the 2nd amendment of the U.S. consitution.
Death to communism! HEIL HITLER!
The.
FUCK.
Nostradamus has predicted the rise of the Persians. The Jew World Order will be defeated.
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.
When you pry it from my cold, dead hands...
Shit.
the article was light on details. Who's the asshole in this case? I usually tend to take the little guy's side (assuming a valid patent) but on the other hand, little guys are often casting about for a deep pockets lawsuit. Hard to say who to root for, if anyone.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
DOesn't prior art have some bearing on this? I mean, the gamecub controllers have been around for how many years now? And Anascape waits until how long ago to file suit? Can they still defend a patent after this long or am I missing something? Something definitely smells fishy here.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=awZrhG5wo.jw
Apparently the big corportations are not hurt enough to change their attitudes towards patents. May more ridiculous patent suits appear, and clear everybody's eyes that patents are sucking and they are obstacles to (rather than protection of) innovation.
Anascape, you have just unleashed the fury of zillions of Slashdot zealots!
Take no prisioners!
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.
Analog sticks?? The first generation of consoles (as in 1970) used them almost exclusively, see: This link. Surely patents on using an analog stick would have expired by now?
Shh.
I would put this under the obvious section, think about it, arcade machines have used them for god knows how long (i remember them 20 years ago). If you put arcade games ona console, you'd expect that the same controllers would be ported to a controller as well. Thinking back, there was a game called time commando(or something similar) in which you could face six or eight directions using the stick, there have been a few with dual controllers as well. The machines the games are run on have changed, so shouldn't the controllers be upgrades just the same ?
Try this joystick out you dumb fags. Maybe you'll get the aids and die like the bitches you are!
the '700 patent has a November 2000 filing date. I couldn't bear to read the whole verbose patent, but the gamecube controller is so very boring that it's hard to imagine what could be in this patent and in the gamecube controller that wasn't in a controller for a system released before November 2000---including the N64, Dreamcast, and Playstation, or any controller for PC. Why wasn't there any prior art to save Nintendo's bacon at trial?
Why not convert to a digital stick. They have digital rotary dials with lots of precision, basically hook 2 of those up to a stick and presto all you would need to modify is the controller's programming and your not infringing.
Found here
//Leached from someone else's hard work in Kotaku comments
(http://www.kotaku.com.au/games/2008/07/nintendos_patent_case_the_unanswered_questions-2.html)
That they're now forbidden by law from selling a console they probably don't even want to support anymore. I guess they'll just have to make due gouging consumers on their latest console.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Hah... Tell that to MadCatz, or Game Infinity, or Pelican Accessories and others. They seem to be doing quite well at making alternative controllers. (With analogue sticks!)
... do the actions of a few motivated individuals become "intellectual terrorism?" Excuse the hyperbole, but every time a patent lawsuit is filed, a lot of people are harmed. How long will we allow this to go on?
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
This is a bit of a pedantic response, but "prior art" means something different. Prior art is evidence of the patented invention, or something substantially similar, having already been invented by someone else, earlier than the patent holder's earliest evidence of invention. Prior art usually invalidates a patent, since only the first inventor can patent something.
What you're asking about is the case of someone sitting on a patent for a while, not enforcing it despite being aware of the violation, and then enforcing it later. There is no automatic statutory ban on this, unlike with trademarks, where you can lose the trademark after a period of not enforcing it. There is a general legal doctrine of "estoppel", which prohibits you from inducing someone else into doing something and then suing them; for example, if you told someone you forgave their debt (even if you didn't legally sign documents to discharge the debt), and they relied on your statement to that effect and bought a house, and now you want the money back and they don't have it because they bought a house with it, they could invoke estoppel since you misled them to their detriment about the status of the debt. In cases like this it's a bit harder to invoke---it's not like the patent trolls actively say "hey anyone can use our patent!" and then later "ha ha just kidding, see you in court!" Instead, they keep quiet for a while, and then sue later, so you'd have to argue their silence was acquiescing to or encouraging the use implicitly, and that it was done intentionally for the purpose of getting the defendant to rely on the patented technology before suing. This has worked on occasion.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Sega had an analog controller before Nintendo and Playstation, it was bundled together with the game NiGHTS into Dreams (wicked game btw) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamepad#Saturn
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
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.
These patents involving a stick as a proportional control for direction are creative, innovative and represent a clever improvement in the art. What I'm not sure of is how the inventor is alive still, as the idea has been around for quite a while, as shown by these craft which used the identical principle.
Aw, who am I kidding? If there were no patents all of the people involved here could have spent the last year of their lives doing something useful instead of quite carefully and at horrific cost arriving at a conclusion destined to be overturned on appeal. All they've accomplished is to drive up the cost of everything we buy and impede the progress of science and the useful arts.
Patents and copyright need to go away.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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?
Cmdr Taco is not yet charging by the comment. It's not necessary to do so because the comments are made from 100% recycled electrons. The comment that bothers you expresses succinctly the shock that such an event could occur in a supposedly fair system. Complain that it's rude or vulgar. It is, and so are the events that induced it. Don't complain that it says nothing, because it conveys an emotion felt by many of us. I'm sure some famous person once said "The trick of writing well is to say what you mean, then stop."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
All the companies involved loose money on their game consoles. Net profit is zero so to keep it legal charge them a yearly license fee of $1. A few settlements like that would slow up some of the troll lawsuits that wait until they feel there's a nice tidy profit to attach. They have no rights to the games themselves and that's where the actual profit is.
It should be his patent, damn Patent trolls are everywhere, They really need to increase the penalty for PATENT TROLLS to life in a jail filled with two inches of month old sewage, and nothing to sleep on but the floor. Ralph H. Baer, inventor of television video games and the Magnavox Odyssey console, created the first video game joysticks in 1967. They were analog, using two potentiometers to measure position.[3] (he is not offiliated with anascape in any way shape or form.) To the sewers with anascape. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joystick#History
My memory is quite foggy on this point, but didn't nintendo use patents on their cartridge design to keep 3rd parties from making unauthorized games for the original NES or something? If so, then this seems to be a bit of USPTO karma.
"You call it a new way of thinking; I call it regression to ignorance!" -- Operation Ivy
How totally different these post would be if you replaced Nintendo and Wii with M$/360 and Sony/PSTriple
Patents are the cancer of /life/
Along with copyright and various other stupid things
I just looked up the patent that was applied for in 2000. If I am not mistaken, didn't Nintendo have an analog stick on their N64 controller in 1996?
Sales are not going to stop. Nintendo will, of course, either post a bond or put the royalties in an escrow account, and continue on manufacturing the infringing items while they appeal. If they win on appeal, they get the money back. If they lose, they pay it, and pay a reasonable royalty from then on, or change the design of their devices to not infringe.
Nintendo used an interesting strategy. They basically conceded that the Gamecube controllers and Wii Classic controller infringed, and concentrated on making sure that only those would be found to infringe. The Wii remote was also accused, and their goal was to keep that from being found to infringe.
Judge Clark commented on this when denying Nintendo's motion for remittitur:
Sony and MS are probably helping this kid out, 'cause they want Nintendo out of the game.
.
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.
anascape.net .. someone exists apparently!
The Wii has been become the most popoular console in the US (here) Based on these facts, of course an US court will rule in favour of a US company as the result will make the country profit from an overseas competitor like Nintendo.
-- LP-Research
we wont be suffering that kind of shit here.
Read radical news here
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I seem to remember reading the claims of at least one Anascape patent. I think it has something to do with a controller containing both an analog stick and an analog trigger (like the L and R triggers on the GameCube and Wii Classic controllers). The Wii Remote and Nunchuk lack an analog trigger. If you want, I can dig up the reference.
I'm really starting to get pissed off. Corporate America is infringing on freedoms more and more, but in insidious ways.
Challenging free speech with law suits.
Challenging freedom of "fair use" with lobbyists who write laws and get them passed.
The patent system affects our freedom of expression.
If these were invading armies, we'd get our guns and defend ourselves. With internationalization, private entities are acting more like governments with no democratic feedback.
I tell you, "patent trolls" wouldn't dare file stupid law suits if we stormed their offices and took the corporate officers as POWs.
I know this is hyperbole, but I'm also kind of serious, we need to start fighting these extra-legal entities who abuse our laws and have no personal legal responsibility.
Am I the only person who gets the impression this company was set-up as a joke, to sodomise the gaming industry?
It doesnt matter whether Anascape is a patent troll, because the courts are an imperfect system. Anascape merely exploited that! I think Anascape realizes that Forward progress is merely an illusion! Therefore if it is impossible to achieve forward progress than you should exploit the faults within the system for your own gain! I applaud Anascape for realizes this fact!
Can you give an example where patent trolls were cheered on for attacking Microsoft or Sony?
I'm surprised no one's brought this up yet. The N64 had an analog stick as well, so why then does this lawsuit only go back to the Gamecube? If their patent only reflects forward from the Gamecube era, couldn't Nintendo just use the N64 as an example of prior art?
They don't sell Gamecubes anymore so they are already stopped.
This sounds like a patent pissing contest... I'm pretty sure nintendo's original NES/SNES controller patents would smack down all of this stuff.
stuff |
A large amount of anonymous death threats could help this situation. terrorists unite!
I doubt any judge in Texas knows anything from a potato.
And anyway, the choice for the rocket docket is because of known bias, lets not pretend otherwise.
the analog sticks in the Classic Controller and GameCube controllers
Yeah, I actually have a patent on the up, down, left, and right arrows on keyboards, and they are kind of similar so I think this company owes me some of their profits.
What really bugs me about these kinds of lawsuits is the company seemingly had no avenue or desire to turn a profit off of their "invention" or "patent" other than through legal manipulation. If I were to go out and totally rip off the iPhone's touch screen interface then fine, sue me for all I'm worth, but if you are holding a patent in hopes that someone will eventually make something that violates it, you're simply 100% in the wrong here. Just my opinion.
The Sega Saturn analog controller (packaged with NiGHTS into Dreams) had an analog stick and two analog triggers.
Did it have analog triggers with an extra tactile "snap" at the far (pressed) end of the range? Or were they like the (subsequent) Dreamcast controller's analog trigger, which just hits a wall at the end? Based on my reading of the claims of US Patent 6,563,415, it covers the tactile "snap" at the far end of a spring-loaded analog button such as the L and R triggers of the GameCube controller.
joysticks have been analog since, what, the 1980's?
I live in the Tyler area and did a quick google search. That is on Lake Tyler and is probably not a business doing much other than fishing and drinking beer.
They're, their, don't loose you're temper, reign it in!
From this gamesindustry.biz article the judge has banned sales of the Wii Classic Controller, Wavebird and Gamecube Classic Controllers.
Sony licensed the patent from Anascape, MSFT got sued as well, but settled. Nintendo fought and lost in court to the tune of $21M. The suit included the Wii controllers, but Nintendo was found not guilty.
There's more information here at bloomberg.
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WTF!!!
I ran into the bullshit problem when I fabricated a joystick to replace an Atari OEM model for an arcade machine I had (I owned an arcade).
Atari demanded I had to BUY theirs at an outrageous cost when it was just a freaking stick with a ball and 4 contacts...
The judge didn't even let them sue me due to it be such an OBVIOUS means to implement a joystick controller and would encourage monopoly of the concept...
i see now how bad things have gotten with patent laws...dumb ass judges and lawyers ruining the world...can we gather them all up, put them on a south pacific island, and test another h-bomb?
Do the patents tell you HOW to make the controller?
If not, then there is no patent.
Desire is NOT a job, but in this case our legal system is allowing just that.
This guy needs to get out and make something (or show is attempting to make something) with the patents he's sitting on, otherwise they should be taken away. Use it or lose it!
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;)
Heh I don't feel like registering for Slash, but I did find an article about why East Texas is absolutely the place to file for IP Infringement:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=16280&ch=infotech&a=f
Nintendo refused to roll over, now they have to fight on. Let's hope they get their day in something other than a kangaroo court.