Big surprise. This sounds a lot like the dualshock story now doesn’t it?
In a nutshell, Bloomberg reports that some company called Hillcrest Laboratories has sued Nintendo claiming that Nintendo is using their motion-controlling inventions in the Wii.
Along with the whole song and dance, Hillcrest is trying to block imports of the Wii and it’s controllers, which will obviously damage Nintendo quite badly if it had to happen. This next part is the one that interests me though.
According to the report on Kotaku, Hillcrest say the following:
“While Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has taken this action to protect its intellectual property rights,”
Sounds like they are trying to suck up to Nintendo at the same time that they are suing them. I reckon they are going to be hoping for an acquisition.
Three of the patents are for the motion controllers with the fourth being for the user interface. Bloomberg reports that the investigation will take around 15 months.
source: Kotaku
Last Updated: August 21, 2008
Rudolph
August 21, 2008 at 15:32
And they only realise this after 2 years and millions of consoles sold?! Something smells fishy…
Abe
August 21, 2008 at 17:07
Yea thats what i was thinking, a little late to the party guys