Nintendo Sued Over Wii Motion Controls

[Tselis]

A statute of limitations does seem like a good idea. Even more so when dealing with technology, since the rate of advance is so fast now. When you can buy a cutting edge widget for $600 and have it be totally average and sold in Walmart for $120 in 1 year, then filing a patent infringement lawsuit 5 years later seems really dumb to me.

p.s. Yes I know I like run-on sentences. If my beloved english teacher couldn't get me to stop, neither will you!

 

[Mahorfeus]

The rehash argument is tired and old. Let him get some rest; his social security checks stopped coming and his grandson hasn't visited him in a week.

Honestly, I hope Nintendo wins, whether they "stole" this tech or not. I know, I'm so bad.

 

[TheLastTatlFan]

If this is anything beyond a publicity stunt (The picture of the Wavit remote next to the article helps that impression) for their product, I will eat the entire internet.

1)I'm a terrible guy to choose to present the escapist.
2)Read the post,they don't "SUX" they just keep rehasheing instead of coming up with something original,even look at the posts that replied to me.
3)they keep making new gimmicks that are unnessacery and wasting their time & money instead of doing something good.

Do you seriously think losing a court case would inspire Nintendo to try new things? If anything, a loss would make them put out MORE re-hashes so they could recoup their losses.

And it's funny how you're singling out Nintendo for practices that pretty much the entire games industry are currently banging on with because producing games and game accessories is a huge investment comparable to sacrificing an arm and a leg and hoping you at least get replacements for them in return.

 

[Therumancer]

Well, this one could get interesting.

I'd imagine that this took five years because it's been in dispute since they discovered it. Given the time, effort, and expense in going to court, a lot of companies prefer to avoid it. I'd imagine that ThinkOptics probably approached Nintendo and was negotiating for acknowlegement and a cut of the Wii profits, and negotiations broke down and now ThinkOptics is going to court over it. Depending on how well the negotiations and such were recorded, and how long it's been ongoing, it probably won't get excluded due to the passage of time.

Truthfully, without having seen the patents in question it's very difficult for me to say whether this is legitimate or not. In the US however they allow people to patent or copyright ideas for later development, which creates all kinds of problems if some engineer makes something and then found out that someone who didn't have the abillity to make it a reality thought of it first and demands ownership or whatever. This is done because one of the things that spearheads innovation is an ideas guy coming up with a concept and then having a bunch of techies find a way to make it work, companies do it all the time. Some famous suits that I'm not sure what happened to included people having filed patents for things like MMO games snd even the internet as it currently exists before the technology to viablly create them existed. This isn't quite that "bad" it seems, but might be in a similar vein. Of course if ThinkOptics actually had a patent on specific technology they could have made but for whatever reason did not, this becomes a complete no brainer, especially if Nintento ran afoul of this patent before... they are going to get slammed and are going to deserve it.

 

[AngryMongoose]

Could you please, in future, be clearer in the title whether you mean a suit is filed or a company has been successfully suit. This was it's kinda misleading.

 

[CrystalShadow]

There really has to be a clause in these ccpyright and patent laws that says if a claim isn't filed within 1-2 years of the offending product's launch, than it is automatically invalid.

That only makes sense if said company is omniscient. It would render pharmaceutical patents nearly worthless, because it turns out that that illegal pharmacy in Sri Lanka has been producing your product for the past four years, and they didn't have the decency to tell you.

It would maul software patents, see, it turns out now, that your company's patent on an algorithm that controls how much capacitance the touch screen needs to register contact going up massively during a phone call has been ripped off by Tangerine's uPhone, but, because they bundled the damn OS into a hermetically sealed structure, labeled it DRM, and it's only now, six and a half years after launch that a hacker in Malaysia has cracked that encryption open and revealed that all this time they've been infringing on your patent.

I'll admit, it does look a little weird that they didn't respond before now, but I'm guessing this was because they believed that the Wii wasn't infringing on their patent and, through the course of whatever, found out. It's also possible they've been trying to seek to deal with this privately since the Wii went live, and finally said, "fuck it, you're not serious about working with us, we'll see your ass in court."

True enough. Altough really, software patents shouldn't exist. There's been several studies that prove they're completely counter-productive.

Given that a patent is supposed to compensate whoever holds it for the effort it took them to invent whatever it is they patented, the evidence seems to suggest this has backfired spectacularly.

While I can't back up the sources off the top of my head, one estimate showed that the lawsuits involving software patents in the US cost about 5 billion in legal costs.
The net commercial value of the patents being argued over was all of about 200 million.
This is not a useful system, and doesn't seem fit for purpose.

 

[Baresark]

Strange. I mean, the odds of this company winning do not seem very good at all. Nintendo has basically moved onto the Wii U. And Sony's motion controller is basically the same gimmick with the only difference being a color changing ball versus infrared.

Good luck to them.

Also, all the hate on Nintendo in this thread is ridiculous. Even if they lost, there is virtually no incentive for them to change how they make certain games. We haven't seen a big Zelda title in 6 years. I know it's basically the same as the Nintendo 64 titles, but who really cares. No one has any right to ***** about it when you think about all the companies that do that same thing, just much more often (BF, CoD, etc.). No to mention, Zelda title tend to be really awesome and fun to play with lots of open world exploration. I mean, Zelda has been open world since the first iteration of it.

 

[zehydra]

I hope that nintendo loses so they will finally drop their rehashes and do original stuff.

I hope that nintendo loses so they will finally drop their rehashes and do original stuff.

You realize this would make more rehashes, right?

Why put out more money on an original idea that might not sell when you can put out a few Mario titles and make a few million in the process?

It's far easier and cheaper to do anything that has an established base than it is to go from scratch.

*raises fist in air* DAM IT NINTENDO STOP MAKING GIMMICKS AND FUCKING REHASHES.Serious>I hope that their new zelda games will fail horribly,and the rest of the rehshes & the WII U.

I certainly hope the new Zelda doesn't fail horribly. I'm looking forward to Skyward sword. Looks good.

 

[draythefingerless]

well this is just silly.

 

[Sight Unseen]

I think it's pretty safe to say that this lawsuit is well outside the limitation period permitted. Seriously, how could they not have noticed this 5 years ago?

I bet this get tossed out by the courts pretty quickly

 

[Colinmac93]

*sigh* Everytime someone sues a gaming company for infringing on patents, we hear about it once and then it's never heard of again. And considering the number of times that they've all been sued and the fact that they're all still here, we can be assured that ThinkOptics will lose miserably.

 

[SpcyhknBC]

Statute of limitations on filing is three years. They are well outside that, this is a non-issue.

http://www.plagiarismtoday.com/2006/03/30/statute-of-limitations-in-copyright-law/

The article mentions the fact that the clock doesn't start until either the item which is infringed is taken off the market (In this case, the Wii is still on the market so it's still legitimate) or if the item which is infringed is hidden, the clock starts when the infringement is discovered. In this case, the patent holder could claim that it was only now that they were able to look at the code and discover that their patents were being infringed. It could also have come down when they found out that the Wii's patents were rejected, they saw that their patents were cited as reasons. As far as I can tell, this lawsuit is legitimate but who knows how long it'll actually last.

If you're saying what it looks like you're saying, the clock stops ticking once the court papers are filed. Statute of limitations only prevents you from filing a case, it doesn't in any way prevent you from perusing a case that's already begun. If you're not, then... uh... cookie?

Captcha: introduce xemoss
Somehow I can't see that and NOT think of inglip...

I was not trying to imply SOL limits the time a court case goes one. I was just trying to point out why the SOL hadn't expired even though the Wii has been out for 5 years. If I could give you a delicious cookie, I would.

 

[yuval152]

If this is anything beyond a publicity stunt (The picture of the Wavit remote next to the article helps that impression) for their product, I will eat the entire internet.

1)I'm a terrible guy to choose to present the escapist.
2)Read the post,they don't "SUX" they just keep rehasheing instead of coming up with something original,even look at the posts that replied to me.
3)they keep making new gimmicks that are unnessacery and wasting their time & money instead of doing something good.

Do you seriously think losing a court case would inspire Nintendo to try new things? If anything, a loss would make them put out MORE re-hashes so they could recoup their losses.

And it's funny how you're singling out Nintendo for practices that pretty much the entire games industry are currently banging on with because producing games and game accessories is a huge investment comparable to sacrificing an arm and a leg and hoping you at least get replacements for them in return.

i meant that maybe if they see that making more rehashes actually damages them they might change it,also other than activision(the mw3 glasses) no other major company proucdes accessories,and lastly other then the kinect no other console maker made something gimmicky.

Almost forgot,look at the list of wii games almost every mario games is a rehash.(or dosen't even match its predecessor)

 

[JediMB]

Hurray for retarded US patent laws. I really hope the planned changes to reduce "low-quality patents" covers these sorts of things.

 

[flaming_squirrel]

Yay! More patent trolling, this is why Americas reliance on suing everything that moves is a bad idea. For one there should be a time limit on this crap, so companies stop waiting years for a product to become as big as possible before jumping out of the shadows waving a lawsuit.

 

[Starke]

There really has to be a clause in these ccpyright and patent laws that says if a claim isn't filed within 1-2 years of the offending product's launch, than it is automatically invalid.

That only makes sense if said company is omniscient. It would render pharmaceutical patents nearly worthless, because it turns out that that illegal pharmacy in Sri Lanka has been producing your product for the past four years, and they didn't have the decency to tell you.

It would maul software patents, see, it turns out now, that your company's patent on an algorithm that controls how much capacitance the touch screen needs to register contact going up massively during a phone call has been ripped off by Tangerine's uPhone, but, because they bundled the damn OS into a hermetically sealed structure, labeled it DRM, and it's only now, six and a half years after launch that a hacker in Malaysia has cracked that encryption open and revealed that all this time they've been infringing on your patent.

I'll admit, it does look a little weird that they didn't respond before now, but I'm guessing this was because they believed that the Wii wasn't infringing on their patent and, through the course of whatever, found out. It's also possible they've been trying to seek to deal with this privately since the Wii went live, and finally said, "fuck it, you're not serious about working with us, we'll see your ass in court."

True enough. Altough really, software patents shouldn't exist. There's been several studies that prove they're completely counter-productive.

Given that a patent is supposed to compensate whoever holds it for the effort it took them to invent whatever it is they patented, the evidence seems to suggest this has backfired spectacularly.

While I can't back up the sources off the top of my head, one estimate showed that the lawsuits involving software patents in the US cost about 5 billion in legal costs.
The net commercial value of the patents being argued over was all of about 200 million.
This is not a useful system, and doesn't seem fit for purpose.

Yeah, I've seen a few sources saying basically the same thing, and I actually agree. Still, they exist and a two year sudden death clause that starts ticking when the product goes on the market would be hideously unfair in a number of circumstances.

 

[Starke]

Yay! More patent trolling, this is why Americas reliance on suing everything that moves is a bad idea. For one there should be a time limit on this crap, so companies stop waiting years for a product to become as big as possible before jumping out of the shadows waving a lawsuit.

This isn't even remotely patent trolling. Patent trolling is when a company buys up patents, and then sues the fuck out of everyone in earshot because they want money.

This looks suspiciously like, the company actually produces a product, one of their patents got infringed upon, and they weren't able to work it out with the company in question. You know, what the patent system is supposed to do.

 

[Hobonicus]

2)Read the post,they don't "SUX" they just keep rehasheing instead of coming up with something original,look at the posts of people that replied to me.
3)they keep making new gimmicks that are unnessacery and wasting their time & money instead of doing something good.

There have been four main Mario and Zelda games released on the main consoles in the last the last fifteen years. Each one (with the exception of the direct sequel Galaxy 2) has not only brought something new but is easily the top of it's class. If Nintendo started making something "new" instead of continuing to release these games, then what would I play if I wanted a game like a Mario platformer or a Zelda adventure? Can you think of any alternatives that rival those franchises at their respective genres? Can you think of any alternatives at all?

And then there's the spinoffs. Mario Kart is the best (and again, one of the only) kart racing games out there. Mario Party is the best (and again, one of the only) video board games out there. Paper Mario is the best (and again, one of the only).

I get that this is The Escapist and a lot of people like the parrot Yahtzee, but the issue isn't like a Call of Duty thing where Activision gets away with making an average game in a bloated genre filled with alternatives and sells it mostly on name. I'm tired of people complaining about Nintendo milking their franchises because the argument is built on trendy hate and lack of perspective.

And for the record, I agree that their recent consoles have been gimmicky, but the 360 and PS3 are already normal consoles so I don't necessarily need Nintendo to be the same. It's kinda odd that you bash their first party franchises for lack change then bash their consoles for being different.

 

[JediMB]

i meant that maybe if they see that making more rehashes actually damages them they might change it,also other than activision(the mw3 glasses) no other major company proucdes accessories,and lastly other then the kinect no other console maker made something gimmicky.

The PlayStation 2 had an accessory needed to plug in more than two controllers. It also had the EyeToy and the Singstar mics.

PlayStation 3 has an accessory required to plug in PS2 memory cards, the new EyeToy, three different controllers (Sixaxis, DualShock 3 and the Move).

Almost forgot,look at the list of wii games almost every mario games is a rehash.(or dosen't even match its predecessor)

If almost every Mario game is a rehash, then 99% of every sequel in the history of ever is a rehash.