An inventor has sued Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony over the controllers they use in their consoles. This law suit is unrelated to the recent experience Sony had with Immersion Corporation over the rumble feature of its gamepads.
In order to assess the credibility of this law suite we have to consider exactly who this inventor is; Fenner Investments, the company behind the filing, claim that their 6,297,751 patent for a low-voltage joystick port interface, is violasted by these console controllers. In the past the same company has been involved in two similar cases, one of very high profile, and has walked away with settlements. Fenner settled with Alcatel while the bigger case involved a legal battle with Lucent, Nortel, Cisco, Juniper and others and also ended in a settlement. Although details of these settlements are hard to get, it has been implied that they were favorable to the plaintiff, as this new filing would seem to confirm.
Fenner Investment's patent, filed in 1998 and granted in 2001, concerns the way a 5V joystick will interface with new, lower voltage integrated circuits. The owner of the patent claims that Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony have all used this method in their console controllers. The suit, filed in Texas last week, is unlikely to progress at a rapid pace so expect more information at a slow pace.
