Slashdot Mirror
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.
When you pry it from my cold, dead hands...
Anascape Ltd. is a Texas-based computer firm specializing in analog-related technology.[1] According to the Dun & Bradstreet database, it is located at "15487 Joseph Rd Tyler, TX."[2] All of Anascape's patents, however, are registed to "Brad Armstrong" of Carson City, Nevada. [3] The companies slogan is "Anascape - The Analog Landscape of the Future!!!"[1]
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Anascape
On the Oregon Cost born and raised, On the beach is where I spent most of my days
Hard to say who to root for, if anyone.
How about basing your decision on the merit of the case rather than which side you "like" more?
In any case, the patent is almost certainly overbroad and/or obvious and never should have been issued, and they were only sued in the court that they were because it is notoriously biased in favor of patent trolls.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
I was about to post the exact same thing (minus the part about the Jew conspiracy) ... a visit to anascape.com shows that the domain is for sale, and google turns up nothing at all on this company besides reference to lawsuits they've launched. So basically it seems this company invents nothing, designs nothing, manufactures nothing, and sells nothing.
If libertarians are so opposed to effective government, why don't they all move to Somalia?
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.
I lean to Nintendo's side since the patents are registered to some dude in Carson City, Nevada; but Anascape is registered in Texas, famous for their friendly attitude toward patent trolls. I think it's a case of jury shopping.
Nintendo Co. Ltd. (Nintendo) has been accused of infringing/and or still infringing on the patents listed:
Patent # Title
6,222,525 "Image controllers with sheet connected sensors"
6,344,791 "Variable sensor with tactile feedback"
6,351,205 "Variable-conductance sensor"
6,563,415 "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback"
6,906,700 "3D controller with vibration"
What could the Classic/GCN controllers violate that the Nunchuk doesn't? Probably the analog triggers that *click* when pushed down all the way. "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback" seems an accurate description.
posting AC because I modded down trolls.
I'll give you a hint: Anascape sued Sony and Microsoft for the same thing, but they settled out of court.
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.
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.
I wonder if part of those settlements was to sue nintendo to bankrupcy.
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 ?
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.
What a coincidence, headquartered only a short drive away from Patent Troll Central, a.k.a., the US District Court, Eastern District of Texas.
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)
"are popular with plaintiffs because they provide the plaintiff with a predictable litigation timetable"
And because the Eastern District of Texas is famous for making sure the plaintiff wins most of the time.
6,563,415 "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback" - This one is invalid through prior art, i.e. atari 2600 joysticks had snap-through tactile feedback.
6,351,205 "Variable-conductance sensor" - This is the stupidest fucking patent, this is just a potentiometer. The patent office is really shining in the stupidity here.
6,344,791 "Variable sensor with tactile feedback" - another stupid ass patent with prior art going back to the 80's. i.e. race steering wheels used in arcade games like pole position.
Maybe I can get a patent for dumb ass patent troll...
6,245,892 "dumb ass patent troll" - Hey I'm going to start sueing!!!
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
The earliest mainstream console with an analog stick I'm aware of was on the (82?) GCE Vectrex, though from your link the infamously terrible 5200 stick predates it by a few months.
Anyway, this patent is about analog sticks with built in rumble packs. Previous controllers (N64,DC) used plug in modules instead. Building one into the controller itself, wow, go go patent trolls.
The companies slogan is "Anascape - The Analog Landscape of the Future!!!"[1]
Remember, the more exclamation points you use, the more exciting people will think your product is.
Ponies!!!
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
6,563,415 "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback" - This one is invalid through prior art, i.e. atari 2600 joysticks had snap-through tactile feedback.
Atari 2600 joysticks were digital, not analog.
If Jews are patent trolls, does that mean you're like, at least part-jewish?
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.
How the heck would they get "Variable conductance sensor" ? Pot's in game controllers are certainly older than 10 years.
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.
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?
Actually, E.D.Tex is so popular with patent infringement plaintiffs because it hands down victory after victory for plaintiffs on questionable procedural rulings and blatant plaintiff favoritism. Why? Sit down, its story time.
Once upon a time, a certain area of Texas was popular for tort plaintiffs because it frequently produced enormous damage awards, thus providing employment and tourism revenue for an otherwise inconsequential part of the United States. Then, a series of tort reform laws were passed to curtail the activities of the offending courts. So, in search of a new means of corrupting the judicial system to keep a constant flow of legal tourism through Mayberry, a judge from Marshall, Texas decided to publish a paper on patent rules.
Having a judge who understands patent law is an excellent proposition, except when the judge intends to contort the law to draw business into his remote domain and benefit his local associates.
Who decides where a case is brought when the defendant (say, a national corporation) is subject to personal jurisdiction throughout the entire country? The plaintiff. How do you persuade patent plaintiffs to bring lawsuits in your backwards town? By handing out numerous favorable decisions and large damage awards.
And so, E.D.Tex and Marshall, TX are the bane of patent defense attorneys throughout the United States, and patents of doubtful validity regularly receive the imprimatur of a federal district court.
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit doesn't agree to hear appeals for every case, nor should it. That would be impossible.
In conclusion, we should never have let Texas into the Union in the first place.
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.
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.
My life for Aiur...I mean, ire.
did the inventor produce working samples?
did the inventor ever attempt to manufacture or license his new idea?
or did he think of ways of joining existing technologies together, patent it, and wait for some poor schlepp to try _actually_ doing it?
thus, the cries of 'patent troll' appear to be in order here.
There is a biiiiiiiiiig difference here.
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.
Nice rant. Now go read the patents in question, and feel real stupid.
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:
What people here don't understand is that you have to read the claims of a patent to know what mechanism really is patented. The claims describe a minimum set of properties that a device should have in order to be covered by the patent. For example:
6,563,415 "Analog sensor(s) with snap-through tactile feedback" - in essence, it is about a button that does 'click' when you press it AND has analog readout. For prior art, you need a combination of these two properties integrated into a single device. The fact that there have been analog joysticks with a clicky button forever is not relevant. In addition there are some technical details on how the click is produced and how the analog reading is done. Make a pressure sensitive button with a capacitive pressure sensor instead of a conductance sensor and it is not covered by this patent.
6,351,205 "Variable-conductance sensor" - this is a variation of the previous one with two click points during pressing the button.
3D controller with vibration - if you read the claim, this seems to be a very complex device with several buttons attached in a specific way combined with potentiometers. The patent was filed in 2000. An Nintendo engineer who knew about this patent could probably have designed around it if he wanted to.
So I don't think the patents are covered by prior art in this case. There is another requirement for a patent, and that is whether the invention is obvious to someone skilled in the art. That is much more fuzzy. In general, if the patent is a new combination of three or more existing inventions, it is non-obvious. If it is only two existing inventions combined, then it depends. I'm not into game controllers, so I can't judge that here.
Avantslash: low-bandwidth mobile slashdot.
They used a lockout chip which could was only manufactured by Nintendo. The system contains one lockout chip, and a game cartridge must have a corresponding lockout chip inside as well. Whenever the lockout chip fails to authenticate, the power light on the NES flashes and the system resets every second. Now you know what component to blame for the flashing gray screen.
Other manufactures used tricks, such as zapping the lockout chip with high negative voltage, to get their unlicensed games running on a NES.
BTW even though the 2600 joystick was in essence digital, all the inputs were read through analog mechanisms.
100% correct. If you ever had a 2600 joystick stop responding properly (as I did many a time) you could disassemble it via 4 screws in the base and then clean the ANALOG contact switches to remove oxidization.
To be sure, I just took apart the one I still have that I use on my C64 and sure enough; ANALOG switches.
.
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.
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
I've seen private inventors being run over by big business, who has a tendency to totally ignore patents that isn't owned by themselves, too many times to feel the least bit upset when one of them actually get some compensation for his patents.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
He invented the joystick sensitivity function found in Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft controllers
Did he? Or did engineers from those three corporations also decide to implement something obvious but not bother to patent their "inventions" first?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
You can't judge a patent by its title, you know.
They don't sell Gamecubes anymore so they are already stopped.
None shall be spared. We will lay waste to their threads and mod down their women!
Nintendo should post a countersuit in the united nations as this would seen a human rights issue.
A company does not have human rights. Try again.
Every decent camera made in the last 20 years already has this. How would such a button not be obvious to an electronics designer?
The Atari 2600 joystick was five digital push-buttons on a circuit board (one for each direction, and the fire button). The console set a single bit for each button pushed. The joystick was read as digital data.
The Atari 2600 paddles, however, were analog. A strobe byte to start the capacitor discharging through the variable resistor inside the controller. The program would check several times per frame for a complete discharge, and use the time it took as the value of the paddle.
Funny enough, the Star Raiders touch pad (and Atari BASIC) was also an analog control. The row and column were the two paddles, and different resistances for each row or column. Read single keys only.
The Atari 2600 steering controller was digital. Two bits per paddle, in the pattern 01-11-10-00 so that only one bit changed as you rotated.
Lastly, the Atari 5200 joystick was entirely analog. Many gamers cursed its lack of return to center. Playing Pac-Man on that monster was not fun.
The Atari 7800 returned to the digital joystick mechanism (backwards compatible with the 2600), but added a second fire button (either fire button triggered the "fire" bit, but an analog method was provided to determine which fire button was pressed (left or right)).
The Coleco controllers were also compatible with the Atari 2600 and 7800 joysticks; I don't remember if the Coleco's keypad was compatible with the Star Raiders touch pad.
Finally, all of these controllers also work with the Commodore 64 and 128 joystick port. Exact same pinouts and functionality (digital and analog). Many times I used a 2600 joystick for Commodore gaming. (I really should try that Koala touchpad with some Atari games...)
That was far too long, hope someone finds it useful.
I've seen private inventors being run over by big business, who has a tendency to totally ignore patents that isn't owned by themselves
The sad part is that if Big N is like many other tech companies, they are literally ignoring patents in the sense that they explicitly tell their engineers not to do patent searches or otherwise try to figure out if any of the things they create in the course of doing their jobs are covered by a patent.
If patents were land mines, and technology were a country, it would be Afghanistan. Or maybe the Korean DMZ. There's so many patents that it's next to impossible not to violate at least one in any non-trivial piece of technology. Even if you do a patent search, you aren't guaranteed to find every potentially applicable patent, nor be able to sort out which do and don't apply in precisely the same way a hypothetical judge would. Yet if you are aware of the existence of a potentially applicable patent, and are found to be in violation, then that's treble damages. Even just doing the search to begin with could imply that you knew of the patent and knowingly violated it.
Thus, they ignore the patents, and hope for the best. When they violate another tech company's patent, then hopefully their own pile of patents gives them leverage. If it's a small inventor, they can either settle or hope the inventor can't afford the legal battle. If it's a patent troll, then they're basically screwed.
I don't know about this case in detail, but it certainly seems plausible to me that Nintendo engineers, deliberately ignorant of any patents and given the concept for a controller with analog triggers that "click" when fully depressed, came up with an invention very similar to the one in the patent.
Private inventors certainly get screwed by this setup. The big tech companies whose engineers are actually making things get screwed too. The system is broken. The only people it is working for are people who do nothing but buy up other peoples' patents, and then sue other companies for violating them, never inventing nor creating anything themselves except obstacles to progress. This is the opposite of the intention of the patent system. It's broken.
The enemies of Democracy are
Nintendo is a Japanese company every one of whose controllers purchased in the US leads to a net export of dollars to that country.
Anascape Ltd is an American company, with an American patent, in an American court, with an American judge presiding, and every penny paid by Nintendo or Sony to such companies leads to a net influx of Yen to the US.
The only remaining question here is were you people born this morning?!
May the Maths Be with you!
They're, their, don't loose you're temper, reign it in!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I get 15 about once a week. As I remember the about page on Slashdot moderation said It's karma related algorithm that also takes several other things in to account, like how often you visit Slashdot. I started posting more over the past year and my karma shot up. In a few months I got a karma bonus, then a few months after that regularly got mod points, then regularly got 15 mod points and finally started getting 15 about once a week. It's almost gotten to the point where I lose more then I use. Has any one been getting 15 mod points before a year ago?