Company sues Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo over joystick patent
Texas-based Fenner Investments shooting for the top with its latest lawsuit, suing Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo for patent infringement. According to Fenner, who also happens to have sued Juniper Networks, Nokia, Cisco, Alcatel, and Ericsson for other alleged patent offenses early last year, the big three console makers are violating its patent for a "low-voltage joystick port interface," which it filed for in July, 1998 and was issued in October, 2001. The patent in question is describes a joystick port interface that includes "an integrated circuit receiving an analog joystick position measurement signal and outputting a digital pulse signal to a processor which signifies a joystick coordinate value," which would seem to cover just about any joystick with an analog stick. For their parts, Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo appear to be staying mum on the subject, although we suspect this is one lawsuit they won't be losing too much sleep over.
[Via Slashdot]
