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Patent Suit Against Nintendo, Microsoft Dismissed
Saul J writes with an update to the patent lawsuit that was filed by Fenner Investments back in 2007 against Nintendo and Microsoft. The suit alleged that the two companies had infringed upon a patent for a joystick port interface. The trial was set to begin today, but now Judge Leonard Davis of the US District Court in Tyler, Texas has ruled that there is no need for a jury trial. One of Nintendo's lawyers said, "Nintendo has a long history of developing innovative products while respecting the intellectual property rights of others. We also vigorously defend patent lawsuits when we firmly believe that we have not infringed another party's patent, despite the risks that this policy entails."
Game Boy, anyone? Directional pad, anyone?
And don't forget the mainstreaming of a lot of techs that may have been done before, but were not successful on consoles (and copied verbatim) until Nintendo did it. Analog joystick (present, non-centering on the Atari 5200, I believe). Rumble. Touchscreen. Motion detection (even before Wii; they had some basic accelerometers in games all the way back with the Game Boy Color).
The Virtual Boy didn't survive, but Nintendo was doing what the other companies weren't: innovating. 3D was just starting out, and they had a system to render 3D the way we do now (N64), but then they also tried something that did 3D the way we see it, with actual stereograms.
Sometimes it doesn't succeed. The DS and the Wii could have gone the same way. But Nintendo tried. They went a different route, tried different things. Same, only better can only take you so far. Like Gunpei Yokoi (father of the Game Boy, but also the Virtual Boy) said, you can make a train go a little bit faster by tweaking it here, and there. But it takes a whole different frame of mind to get massive changes, from a normal train to a bullet train.
Nintendo has shown they've done such things. It doesn't make them gimmicks. The only worry is that they don't follow up, that they stagnate. But so far, they've done well.
Maybe the people who patented the use of a simple lookup table to add long filenames in an 8.3 based filesystem might disagree with you?
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
It's probably something more specific than just a port, some specific attributes. Also the first game ports were pretty much just wires directly to the buttons and such, digital codes only came later.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
My guess is that Fenner Investments isn't even looking to win the suit. They probably just want Nintendo and MS to pony up some settlement money.
That is why they are called "Patent Trolls". If more companies stood up to them these Trolls would just fade away, however most companies don't have the money to get patents invalidated so they pay up what is to all intensive purposes extortion money which unfortunately strengthens the patent in the eyes of the law (called precedent).
Patent Trolls usually start off attacking a company that is small and since the company can't afford any long drawn out litigation it pays what to them is affordable amount of money to make the Troll go away. This is great from the Troll's perspective so they go after more higher profile companies with a now much stronger patent always being careful not to attack those who can fight until they have strengthened their patent before the law.
Nasty but that's how the law can be made to work for the Troll. Fortunately this case was given the boot but I would not be surprised if the Troll bounced back with a slightly stronger patent and the fun continues again. In the long term it is the consumer who pays for this ridicules pantomime.
There is genuine patent litigation, however it only takes a few Troll's to bring the whole patent system into disrepute. Of course it does not help when you have countries that recognise software patents which IMHO are really patenting mathematical constructs and some simple electronic circuits that any second year University student would find obvious but that is an argument for another day.
There ain't no such thing as proprietary standards only proprietary formats. Standards are by definition open.