No, I'm not kidding, it's not a gratuitous headline hit-grabber, Nintendo is in fact facing a serious ban on several of the controllers for the Wii as well as GameCube after it lost its legal bid to scuttle a $21 million patent-infringement verdict.
Microsoft was also on the hook at one point, but settled before trial. Nintendo went to trial and lost, and on June 26, District Judge Ron Clark (U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Texas) denied Nintendo's claim that the $21 million payment to Anascape was excessive. Clark also threw out Nintendo's bid for a new trial. He is supposed to issue his ban today.
Blame Anascape Ltd. Or blame Nintendo. Or just blame luckless entropy if you think it's all just some great big coincidence.
What's Anascape? Some firm in Texas without a searchable Web page, for one. Also the owner of patents 5,999,084 ("variable conductance sensor"), 6,102,802 ("game controller with analog pressure sensor"), 6,135,886 ("variable conductance sensor with elastomeric dome cap"), 6,208,271 ("remote controller with analog button"), 6,222,525 ("image controller with sheet connected sensors"), 6,343,991 ("game control with analog pressure sensor"), 6,344,791 ("variable sensor with tactile feedback"), 6,347,997 ("analog controls housed with electronic displays"), 6,351,20 ("variable conductance sensory"), 6,400,303 ("remote controller with analog pressure sensor"), 6,563,415 ("analog sensor with snap through tactile feedback"), and finally, 6,906,700 ("3D controller with vibration").
Did you really just read through all of that? I'm sorry.
But glancing at a few of those, you can kind of see where the issue(s) might be, whether you come down on the side of "to heck with all this silly anticipatory patent law" or all the way over on the other end with a hearty "to heck with Nintendo flouting all that silly anticipatory patent law." Or something.
Here's the skinny on what it actually affects:
* The GameCube or WaveBird controllers, which Nintendo no longer makes.
* The Wii Classic Controller (Nintendo's Charlie Scibetta says the company will still be able to sell it pending Nintendo's appeal).
Here's what it doesn't:
* The Wii Remote (unless paired with the Wii Classic Controller)
* The Wii Nunchuk
How will Nintendo get out of this one? They'll have to either post a bond or put royalties in an escrow account to avoid a sale halt, according to Anascape's lawyer Doug Cawley. Nintendo of course plans to appeal the verdict, claiming it didn't use Anascape's technology.
Would someone just get on with it and put us out of our misery by patenting the universe already?
|
