The Big Three Sued Over Port Patent

[DeathscytheX 9,732]

http://ps3.ign.com/articles/754/754407p1.html

The Big Three Sued Over Port Patent

MS, Nintendo and Sony named in latest controller lawsuit.

by Hilary Goldstein

January 10, 2007 - Not a week seems to go by without a lawsuit. This week's legal woes come to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony courtesy of a suit filed by Texas-based Fenner Investments. The suit claims all three infringed on the company's 1998 patent for a "low-voltage port interface" according to Gamasutra.

While the famed Immersion lawsuit focused on force-feedback technology, this most recent suit is concerned with joystick ports. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction against the big three.

The merit behind the suit is unclear as of the filing. The patent summary reads: "The joystick port interface according the present invention is a low power port which interfaces a typical 5 Volt joystick peripheral device with a lower power computer port. The low-voltage joystick port interface includes a bidirectional buffer circuit and a pulse generator which, together, generate a digital pulse signal, representing a joystick coordinate position, based on an input analog measurement signal."

It remains to be seen what the next patent lawsuit might be, but we're certain another will come within the next month.

This is such a joke. They need to hammer this stupid little companies for everything their worth and put it out of business.. obviously all they want is money. I highly doubt there is any merit to any of their lawsuits.

[gokuDX7 2,871]

ya their was a news bit about this on digg. I guess this company is known for doing stuff like this. It goes after huge company's and trys to make money. The little company actuly has allot of major Patents which sucks since they don't use them for anything lol.

[narutofan 100]

Stupid stuff, all these. Their law departments seem to have nothing better to do, & are thus seemingly trying to 'create' work for themselves...