About, oh --
four years ago -- a little Texas company called Anascape sued Nintendo and Microsoft for ostensibly violating its controller patents. Microsoft settled. Nintendo didn't.
Anascape won. One $21 million judgment, two years and countless legal bills later, Nintendo has finally emerged victorious over the patent troll. This week, a Federal Circuit Court overturned
two earlier decisions, ruling that Nintendo's GameCube, WaveBird and Wii Classic Controllers don't violate Anascape's six-degrees-of-freedom patent, because Anascape only added that 6DOF claim to its patent in 2000... making Sony's original
DualShock controller -- released in 1998 -- prior art.
Game, set, match.
