Immersion CEO: Begging Sony To Add Rumble

[DemoCoder]

The patent system is completely broken. For one, business models, mathematics, software, and naturally occuring gene sequences, should not be patentable. Number two, the USPTO allows "land grab" patents which are overly broad and cover no presently working embodiment. These abstract patents contain hundreds of claims and are chopped down through a back and forth process with the USPTO and IP law firm until it goes through. Think of it like riders on congressional bills. A patent on say, software force feedback algorithms could contain claims on say, object oriented design patterns used for the device driver. Years later, they then go sue a non-forcefeedback deep pocketed company that happens to have an objected oriented device driver API that resembles the pattern's description.
Number three, the USPTO is incompetent at prior art searches and they let a large number of patents go through which describe inventions already in the public domain. Number four, overturning a granted patent even if you can show readily available prior art is an expensive and difficult task, often costing more than just licensing the patent.

Number five, the Immension rumble is nothing more than the same assymmetric rotating mass used into sex toys for decades, and I"m sure one could find a sex toy or massage chair with embedded microcontroller that controls the rumble of the chair via software. It's completely obvious. I had "invented" such a rumble myself when I was young.

Number six, I own several patents myself and have gone through the process with law firms. It's completely unethical, the law firms are there to maximize land grab. It's cybersquatting of the realm of ideas. They add claims for shit that aren't even in your original invention. I have also been threatened by patents, and I work in an area now that is threatened by bogus patents. Mobile email is the classic example. NTP holds patents on completely, 100% incontrovertably obvious patents that were used to rake in hundreds of millions by raping RIM and almost putting the Blackberry to rest. The techniques described in NTP's patents were used for years in PCs, the fact that the same software inside of a mobile phone, using TCP/IP, yields "mobile email" as opposed to one plugged into an ethernet cable is irrelevent. The algorithms are identical, only the network layer has changed.

The patent system has expanded far beyond its original intent and is being highly abused in modern times. It has turned into a great patent game, where companies race to first as many patents and as many claims as possible in order to have a "war chest" of insurance to defend itself against other companies. To combat this, law firms have sprung up which buy patents, produce no products, and do nothing by sue big companies. They cannot be countered suited with the "war chest" because they PRODUCE NOTHING. Left out, is small players who can't afford the game, and will get nailed as soon as they start making real money.

When I worked at IBM, the encouraged every employee to try and patent something, and paid $1000-4000 for success per patent. At Oracle, they pay $5000 per patent bonus. There are fresh out of college students at Google today who own a half dozen patents or more. Think they're all novelties? Most of these patents are stuff like "Using Popup Menu to have contextual actions for onscreen data on a web site" and other nonsense. 1-click buy patents, shopping cart patents, reverse auction patents, all nonsense.

There are legitimate sectors which need patent protection, where the R&D takes lots of $$$, the time to market is very long, and the ROI requires a long time. (e.g. pharmaceuticals) But any product which takes barely any time to think up, and could be duplicated by a group of engineers if asked for ideas on it (like how to implement force feedback), or has a short time to market, and is obsolete in a decade should not be granted a 17-20 year monopoly.

Does someone inventing a vibrating joystick really need protection until the year 2027?

 

[Powderkeg]

Number five, the Immension rumble is nothing more than the same assymmetric rotating mass used into sex toys for decades, and I"m sure one could find a sex toy or massage chair with embedded microcontroller that controls the rumble of the chair via software. It's completely obvious. I had "invented" such a rumble myself when I was young.

Actually it's very different from sex toys, unless you can name me the sex toy that has 2 independently controlled vibration motors which are linked to and controlled by software on a host computer that are designed to create a tactile feedback response to actions performed within the software.

Immersions patent is quite a bit more specific than what you pretend it to be.

 

[Marvelite]

Do both the Hawker Harrier and Cell Phones use the hardware architecture described in Immersion's patent?

No?

Then how do they compare? The patent wasn't granted for an idea, it was granted for a method in hardware to achieve that idea.

Other companies are free to develop alternative methods to achieve the same result, and that would not infringe on the patents. This is why Logitech, Immersion, and Microsoft all have seperate patents for tactile feedback in force feedback wheel controllers. They all use different methods to achieve the same end result.

Sony's problem is they didn't develop a different method, they used the one Immersion holds the patent on.

Sony defense was that they licensed the force feedback controller patent from Logitech during 1998. (I checked an entrance on DualShock in Wikipedia) Maybe Sony should in turn should sue Logitech for misleading them. After all, when they licensed the technology, Sony thought they have right to use them.

So the court say Immersion own the patent. But they are acting like a creepy guy that is stalking some girl. Sony basically says that they don't want to have anything to do with Immersion. Have'nt they heard of the line, No means no.

 

[DemoCoder]

Actually it's very different from sex toys, unless you can name me the sex toy that has 2 independently controlled vibration motors which are linked to and controlled by software on a host computer that are designed to create a tactile feedback response to actions performed within the software.

Wow, now that's impressive. I mean, when I used my Commodore 64 to control a vibrator, as well as a heating element in 1987 for a school science project, I guess I should have patented it. And then there's all those Silicon Valley hackers who make dildonics devices in the 70s and 80s, some of which used microcontrollers, and all had the specific design to create tactile feedback response to actions performed by software, except that the software happened to me merely a remote control program for other human operators.

Maybe Immersion should pay Ted Nelson and Howard Rheingold for the ideas. Or what about the US military and haptics interfaces going back to the 1950s?

The two main Immersion patents (out of the 500 or so they have filed) contain almost 80 claims, many of which are just variations to cover refinements or other techniques that may be employed. Leaving aside the fact that Immersion was not the first company to invent rotating mass actuators coupled to software, or to use them controlled by software for a tactile response, or to have them vibrate in rhythm to music (one of their other claims) nor are they the first to conceive of the idea in general (software coupled to vibration units to provide tactile response, described in literature long before Immersion), they idea is fundamentally obvious.

Go find twelve aging engineers who have never heard of dual shock, immersion, et al. Ask them to design a system for providing tactile sensation of simulated software actions through a hand held human interface device. I guarantee you atleast one of them will come up with vibration from rotating masses and that the algorithms devised to simulate various effects will turn out to be very similar.

There are many papers, many inventions I read about in ACM, iEEE, or in medical journals which truly are non-obvious and have a large search space making it unlikely of collision (two inventors inventing exactly same idea) Immersion is not one of them. As far back as 1985, I played with a device at a science museum that "punished" you for wrong answers via vibration. In 1987, I myself was controlling vibrators through the CIA chips in the C64. In 1991, I was spectating VR hacker groups where people were building actual teledildonics hacked devices designed to work over internet chat, so that "emote" actions could trigger the device to go off. (e.g. "/tickle", "/caress" )

Most of the Immersion defenders appear to be either people hopelessly clueless about the inherent problems of the patent system, or anti-Sony biased people cheerleading the case simply because its hurting Sony, or otherwise people who want Sony to pay up just to get vibration into the controller ASAP instead of fighting in court.

I say, companies bending over and taking it up the ass are merely encouraging more of the same and that they should fight in court for as long as possible, like Blackberry, because if no one fights, the public will never see how important this issue is, and how fucked up the system is. Both Patent and Copyright are being extended far beyond their original bounds and someone needs to stand up. Belgium courts finded Google for posting 1 paragraph excerpts of newspaper articles and because the idiot Belgium newspapers don't want to use robots.txt to block spiders, the reality is, it was an attempt shakedown of deep pocketed Google, and a sad curtailment of "fair use" in copyright law. Everywhere, the future landscape of ideas and information is being increasingly owned and restricted. I say it's about time someone fights and stops taking the abuse.

 

[DemoCoder]

Sony defense was that they licensed the force feedback controller patent from Logitech during 1998. (I checked an entrance on DualShock in Wikipedia) Maybe Sony should in turn should sue Logitech for misleading them. After all, when they licensed the technology, Sony thought they have right to use them.

Sadly, with the current patent system, it's no defense. Let's say you License patent A. Someone comes along and patents B which extends A. They have overlapping claims in B. You now need to license both A and B. It matters not that the claims of A which apply to your device are also in B, but merely permutated or varied.

As an example, let's say you licensed 1-click shopping from me. One of the claims says that 1-click shopping operates by storing a cookie on your browser to remember your personal info. Now let's say I implement this patent. Later, patent #2 called "1-Click Shopping Plus" says that the 1-click shopping operates by using a unique identifying token, which may be stored in a cookie, or in a Flash storage, or via ActiveX plugin, or via Java applet. If this patent makes it through the USPTO (which it would), you would now be obligated to license both.

 

[avaya]

Are patent cases settled by a jury or a judge?

I would imagine it would have a big impact on the results of these cases.

 

[DemoCoder]

I don't recall, I think it is up to the defendant, however most of the time it is jury. Appeals are subject to panel of judges, not jury tho.

 

[Powderkeg]

I don't recall, I think it is up to the defendant, however most of the time it is jury. Appeals are subject to panel of judges, not jury tho.

That is correct.

The initial trial is usually done with a jury unless the defendent waves his rights to a jury trial.

Appeals are always handled by judges though, since appeals are based on the question of legalities of certain rulings in the original trial. Appeals do not re-try the case, they judge processes and rulings made during the trial that may have improperly influenced the outcome.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

Most of the Immersion defenders appear to be either people hopelessly clueless about the inherent problems of the patent system, or anti-Sony biased people cheerleading the case simply because its hurting Sony, or otherwise people who want Sony to pay up just to get vibration into the controller ASAP instead of fighting in court.

And then there are those defending Immersion because they are all too aware of the inherent problems in the US patent system. It isn't Immersion's fault that the patent system is mostly insane - they are just playing the game by the rules established by others... playing it the same way that so many before them have.

I defent Immersion not because they are "morally" right but because they are "legally" right. Precedent, no matter how crazy it might be, has long been set.

I'm all in favor of revamping the patent system, but so long as the laws are written and interpreted as they are now, I can't blame Immersion one iota for their actions. Not defending their patent, however lame the granting might have been (USPTO's fault, NOT Immersion's), would have been a bonehead move. They did what they had to. And Sony reacted the way any foreign company with deep pockets would have (hell, most US based ones too). Can't blame them for that either. Doesn't make Sony on the right side of US law though. And patent lawsuits aren't filed, defended, judged, or granted on moral considerations, but legal ones.

 

[flick556]

I don't understand how a jury can be educated on prior art and gain a deep enough understanding of the technology in question to make a fair judgment in a short amount of time.

Without the proper education this would become a battle of pursasion and charisma.

 

[Powderkeg]

I don't understand how a jury can be educated on prior art and gain a deep enough understanding of the technology in question to make a fair judgment in a short amount of time.

They can't, but then again it's nearly impossible to get an unbiased panel together that is well educated in and fully qualified to judge a single patent case, much less the tens of thousands of cases each year that cover thousands of completely different products.

No matter who judges it you have to assume they are less than an expert in the field.

Without the proper education this would become a battle of pursasion and charisma.

Not entirely. In truth both sides will make a massive effort to explain their side in laymans terms so that the jury can understand the issue very well. After all, no one wants to lose the case simply because they failed to make themselves understood by the jury.

 

[Shifty Geezer]

The two main Immersion patents (out of the 500 or so they have filed) contain almost 80 claims, many of which are just variations to cover refinements or other techniques that may be employed.

That is actually what a claims section should be. You have the original idea and then all the variations of that method to refine the invention's range. Grab nay patent and you should see reams of claims that are all slight variations on the other claims, but all must be rooted and referenced to Claim no. 1.

 

[DemoCoder]

Uh no, patent claim sections are not authored merely to cover obvious extend of the inventions range, but are authored to grab as much territory as possible. As I said, I have gone through this process personally with top law firms. They added many claims to my patents that I would not have, just to grab as much meme-space as they could with the idea that you submit MORE claims to the patent office than you think will be approved, including lots of bogus ones, just to increase the chances of atleast some of them getting through. It is a thoroughly disingenuous process. Claims should pertain ONLY to a working embodient and not to an any combinatorial use case (Use Widget X attached to bike. Use Widget X on toilet with wall attachment...etc)

And then there are those defending Immersion because they are all too aware of the inherent problems in the US patent system. It isn't Immersion's fault that the patent system is mostly insane - they are just playing the game by the rules established by others... playing it the same way that so many before them have.

I defent Immersion not because they are "morally" right but because they are "legally" right. Precedent, no matter how crazy it might be, has long been set.

No, the game rule is that patents are used for defense purposes to protect yourself from being sued by others. Immersion is not "playing the game", they are aggressing against others and therefore exploiting the system for gain. Sorry, I just can't excuse it. Just because something is legal, don't make it right. There are housing market scams where people are legally ripped off of ownership to their house via legal technicalities/loopholes in sales contracts. It's perfectly legal! Hey, they're just playing the game according to the rules that were set, so you can't criticize them!

It appears the idea of acting with responsible principles and not trying to exploit loopholes or cheat the system is dead now, and everything is ok, as long as you can get away with it.

 

[Tagrineth]

I'm not going to read this thread. Instead, I'll make my usual humourous comment based on a post on the first page.

Immersion patented vibrations? Holy cow!

Damn. Fun's over for me, I guess. Gonna have to pony up to Immersion now =c Hopefully they'll accept ignorance as an excuse for prior use of this patent, or I'll be in a lot of trouble >_>

 

[Shifty Geezer]

Uh no, patent claim sections are not authored merely to cover obvious extend of the inventions range, but are authored to grab as much territory as possible. A...Claims should pertain ONLY to a working embodient.

Well that's certainly what I understand them to be supposed to be used for, though I can imagine they're not being used that way.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

It appears the idea of acting with responsible principles and not trying to exploit loopholes or cheat the system is dead now, and everything is ok, as long as you can get away with it.

It's more than that, Demo, and you know it. When companies don't actively defend their patents, it dilutes substantially the strength of the patent. I made it very clear that I understand the difference between ethics and legality.

And I completely disagree with your statement of the "rule of the game." Patents were never intended as primarily defensive measures, but rather to give the owner legal grounds for stopping a competitor from marketing the thing.

 

[arjan de lumens]

When companies don't actively defend their patents, it dilutes substantially the strength of the patent. I made it very clear that I understand the difference between ethics and legality.

This is a rule that applies to Trademarks, not Patents. There is the legal concept of "laches" for patents, however this concept is rather different from the broad dilution that is seen with Trademarks.

If patent holder A dues not immediately sue infringer B upon learning that B has infringed his patent, he might lose the right to sue B after a few years due to 'laches', however this does not weaken the strength of the patent itself when it comes to suing other infringers than B. Relevant precedence here includes e.g. the two Wanlass cases (where one patent holder makes two infringement claims against two separate infringers after having left his patent undefended for more than a decade; he loses the first one on grounds of laches, but he does win the second one in the same court 10 days later.)

 

[fearsomepirate]

So is this anything that could possibly be fixed, or is it pretty much decided by some deep-pocket lobbyists and not comprehensible enough to John Q Public to ever be fixed?

 

[crosseye]

This is ALL rediculously STUPID. Immersion filed the patent before the Dual Shock. Immersion works in MANY fields other than video games (give up this stupid crack-pot thinking). Immersion actually has a WORKING product unlike patent squaters. Immersion offered the oportunity long ago for Sony to solve this before it ever went to court. After this went to court Sony lost. Sony lost again. In fact, one of the judges was so UPSET with Sony he scolded their tactics and wrote a scathing judgment. Finally, Sony lost ONE MORE TIME!

SOOOOOO......you may not like the patent system, you may not agree with the system, it may need to be fixed, but this is NOT the case of Immersion being the bad guy.

 

[Bigus Dickus]

This is a rule that applies to Trademarks, not Patents. There is the legal concept of "laches" for patents, however this concept is rather different from the broad dilution that is seen with Trademarks.

If patent holder A dues not immediately sue infringer B upon learning that B has infringed his patent, he might lose the right to sue B after a few years due to 'laches', however this does not weaken the strength of the patent itself when it comes to suing other infringers than B. Relevant precedence here includes e.g. the two Wanlass cases (where one patent holder makes two infringement claims against two separate infringers after having left his patent undefended for more than a decade; he loses the first one on grounds of laches, but he does win the second one in the same court 10 days later.)

I stand corrected. I was well aware of the cases where patent latches prevent suit, but I assumed the consequences extended to other competitors as does with trademarks. Interesting.