Sony loses lawsuit against Immersion??

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It seems really bad huh? Oh well.

The bottom line is, as the law is written Sony screwed themselves REAL bad. Immersion is just taking advantage of the fact that Sony screwed themselves.

If given the oppertunity to sue Sony for that kind of money and get away with it - screw you all - I'd do it.

Companies patent things because:

1) Keeps other companies from using your ideas without your permission or with paying you what you want for it.

2) Allows you to use the law to sue the rotten sh!t out of whoever violates your patent.

Somehow, someway - Sony missed the fine print - and now they are getting drilled like an out of control 16 year old cheerleader. Sh!t happens.

 

But the problem is that the immersion patents were filled after Sony had already released the dual shock which should make the patents worth only the paper they were written on.

 

That might be the date they were granted. If so they could have been filed years earlier and it's the filing date that matters.

I'm sure if the patents were filed after Sony had shipped a dual shock controller there would have been no trial beyond the first stage where the judge determines the scope of the patent.

 

I posted the patents that were violated on the first page of the thread. The earliest filed date was in May 2000 when the dual shock was released in 1998.

 

Seems like it right.

But not true.

Whoever patents it first - gets the gold. Which means that the moment Immersion's patent request was approved - Sony was then using patented technology.

No doubt, to help their case, Immersion would have notified Sony that they were in violation and that they needed to go into a contract agreement if Sony continued to use the technology.

If sony refused - and it looks like they did - then that put Sony's ass in the air.

Companies are given a certain amount of time to stop using a patent after they have been notified that they are in violation (Or huge fines come into play) - normally, they also have to give a percentage of revenue earned for any products sold with the product for the interim.

If Sony refused to pay... well you can see how brutal the punishment is.

Sony is paying out the ass because they sold so many PS2's and PS1's with the patent design. Immersion is now taking a chunk out of every PS2 sold at a premium.

But whichever way you slice it - Sony planted the dildo - now they have to sit on it.

I guess Sony needs better lawyers.

 

Without jumping the gun on when the patent was filed and when it was accepted, the fact is Sony was using someone else's idea. There are a lot of ways to do "rumble". This is similar to how Nintendo patented the Cross shaped D-Pad. While all these patents may be stupid, ALL these companies use them because it is the law and the only way to protect your ideas and products. I am sure Sony would not be to happy if someone used one of their patents, and I am sure they would sue.

If Sony used another companies idea then they should pay--and even more than it would have cost to license it. The 90M number seems huge, but you are talking about 80M plus controllers with this technology PLUS probably another extra 40M-120M Sony brand PS2 controllers (every console I have owned since the N64 has 4 controllers... almost all are 1st party). Considering these controllers are sold from between $20-$25, Immersion getting $1 a controller is not outrageous.

I think this is a pretty cheap penalty, and I am sure the fact Sony decided to take the court route instead of licensing the tech did not help costs. It costs a lot of money to go to court, especially against a mega corperation like Sony.

I think before we jump to too many conslusions it would be nice to have more info on the case--which may be hard because I am sure there will be continued litigation and other parties like MS have settled outside of court and would be best of not saying anything. I do find it interesting that companies like Logitech and Madcatz did license their tech though. I think that says a lot.

 

Yes it does. It makes it harder for the courts to ignore the validity of the patent when other companies have licensed it. If they ignore it - that means that the companies that have already licensed it have a point to get their money back - which will never happen.

And the courts will not easily sour their crediblity by overturning a patent that has already been licensed in more than one occasion. If they do, that opens a sh!t load of worms.

What the court says is final - Immersion has way to good of a case just in the fact that others - including MS - have acknowledged the patent and already paid their respects.

Sony was stupid - the moment they saw MS settle, they should have followed. Now they have to shine the shoes the walk in.

Stupid really.

 

yep. i can only add to that that it's not uncommon for companies, regardless how big their lawyer departments may be, to agree to pay ("settle out of court") on some clearly bogus cases, just to save themselves the court expences which could sometimes be potentially greater (particularly if such case have sprung from some almighty patent office). such a scenario, basically, by the force of precedence, gives those bogus claims a scent of legal rightfulness. you can figure out the rest.

 

You know its strange how the N64 rumble pack patent was filed February 16, 1999.

Also but what you are ignoring is the actual dates that matter are the below

For 6,275,213 and the date that matters is where the first patent that has the claims that are infringed upon which I can see is at least in the 1998 patent 6,088,017 . Unfortunately can't view abandoned patents in the USPTO's system which I bet as well includes the same ideas.

Now the other patent is a patent not for the device but for using a suite of force feedback effects through an API that likely Sony wasn't using before May 5, 1999 (and if they were don't you think Sony would have shown that they were to convince the jury?).

Edit: heh and did a quick recheck of the rumble pack patent which is a continuation of a patent filed Oct. 8, 1996.

 

Of course this is classic submarining.

 

And $ony is a Bully

 

If you read down a bit further in the patent you will see:

In other words, you have to go back to "application Ser. No. 08/565,102, " and see what was contained in that to see if it has priority.


EDIT: Ahh I see someone else has already commented to this effect.

 

If the original patent is discontinued, surely what it covers is now public domain? And why did Immersion drop it?

 

We can argue as much as we want. In the end, in a ~30M dollar law suite, the judge, the lawyers, everyone will know dates, ideas, patents, EVERYTHING about this case and will reach an agreement (or settlement) according to that.
It's very difficult to "cheat" in such high profile cases.

 

That's not what it means.


Now IANAPL (and I could be wrong) but, it seems to me that the process is:

You file a patent but, before it is granted, you suddenly realise there are some improvents/additional tweaks you wish to add**. Obviously these can't be applied given the original filing date as that would be rewriting history and so you effectively have to create a new patent combining the old and new material. You still must be allowed protection on the earlier material at the earlier date and so that would explain why the abandoned patent is still relevant.

** You might ask "why not just create a new patent with just the new material?". I'm not entirely sure about this sort of thing, but it seems to me that if the new material was a separate patent, someone (eg examiner) may think that the new patent is obvious given the existing patent's contents. Keeping everything in the one patent avoids that complication.

Of course, I might just be babbling on here.

 

Being British, I'm no expert on US Legal process, but haven't we got a few more levels of justice to go through before this thing has run it's course.

 

Oh come now Simon ...

There is another very good reason to continue patents like this ... and while I might be paranoid on the issue, your pretend naivite is slightly unbelievable You know how patents work, and you know how lawyers work. So lets try that again, can you think of no other reason than you stated for patent continuation?

 

It is true that, in the past, the previous crazy US patent laws were open to a form of abuse known as submarining but who can say this is the case here?

I don't know the situation so I will assume everything was above board.

The US has now adopted laws that are similar to those that apply in the rest of the world.