Nintendo Wii: Banned in the USA?
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 Thursday, June 26, 2008, 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.
Blame Anascape Ltd. Or blame Nintendo. Or just blame luckless entropy if you think it's all just some great big coincidence.
Who's Anascape? Some firm in Texas without a listed 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
The judge in the case is supposed to issue his ban today.
How's 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?
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So did this company Anascape even come up with a product? Or are all of those just for thought concepts?
Oh, buy the way, I own the rights to any robot suits, holographic servants, and the vowel some times Y
"No, I'm not kidding, it's not a gratuitous headline hit-grabber"
That's exactly what it is.
Your article even highlights It's just the gamecube controller and the wii classic controller that were ruled against.
So you either lied you're statement or your an idiot.
Nintendo successfully fought off claims against the wiimote and nunchuck, there were no claims were filed against the system. Therefore the Wii is not to be banned.
Wow. How can the Wii get banned? The lawsuit is only for one controller. The Classic Controller. Besides I doubt it will even get banned.
Wow Matt,
Have a bit of disdain for Patent Laws do we? Without them everything from the electric light, to penicillin, to HDTV would not have been invented because the creators would not have the exclusive right to make, sell, or license their invention.
ps... Coletrain- You cannot recieve a Patent for "thought concepts" (note that even the article listed the Patent #s) but rather for working designs. It costs alot of money and takes alot of time to receive a patent, not to mention an extremely large amount of hoops you have to jump through. Maybe if you had spent your time to invent something and paid the money to get it patented, you might want to stop a huge multinational corporation from taking your design and making billions off of it? Yeah?
Interesting article but I didn't like the title. Bloomberg.com had a more appropriate title: Nintendo Faces Ban on Some Wii, GameCube Controllers.
p.s. anyone have problems posting comments here on pcworld with Firefox 3? I get stuck in an endless sign on loop. It wont ever actually log me on. I had to use ie7 to post thsi.
Everything in moderation WinstonAug. You need to go do some reading about Monsanto and Round-Up Ready seed (just for starters) before you represent patents as an innovation panacea, which they most certainly ain't. :)
I had ZenMasta's sign-on problem once. I had to goto Tools > options > privacy and click on Show Cookies. Then I searched for "pcworld" and deleted all of the cookies there (shift-click). Then I went back to pcworld.com and signed in. Hope this helps.
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Unicron - July 23, 2008 6:48 AM PT
So you either lied you're statement or your an idiot.
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The irony here is priceless.
'Nintendo Wii: Banned in USA?'? Try 'Nintendo Classic Controller: Banned in USA?'
I find it funny you said it wasn't a headline grabber and yet it has nothing to do with the actual content. The Nintendo Wii is NOT going to be banned in the USA.
Crazy stuff. Doesn't matter about the title; but if the controllers do get banned, there'll always be e-bay. (More money, but that'll be good for some people. IE: me)
Also, Zen Masta, I'm not having any problems posting with FF3.