InterlinkSuesNintendo
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Nintendo gets sued over Wiimote [update 1]
Poor Nintendo, just when it looks like they have a sure-fire hit on their hands, someone has to go and sue them. It would appear that someone claims they came up with the technology in the Wiimote and is now taking Nintendo to court; no, it isn't Sony. Interlink Electronics, a California company most of us never heard of, thought that the good ol' Wiimote has infringed on one of their patents. From what the suit entails, they're not suing over the full-range motion, but over a trigger. Our best translation of the patent abstract is the trigger is pressure sensitive and transmits using infrared. From what we can discern, this would appear to be a shot in the dark lawsuit. Pressure sensitive triggers have been around for a long while now and patent law does state that the patent needs to be novel; since the N64 [update: bad author memory, N64 simulated pressure sensitivity, not actual] PS2 featured pressure sensitivity -- the technology also most likely existed prior to that -- and the complete lack of infrared transmission (the remote senses the IR from the sensor bar to acclimate itself) from the Wiimote (it uses Bluetooth to transmit) makes this suit suspect. There seems to be too many key differences -- and irregularities -- to make this a winnable case for Interlink. [Thanks, dark54555]
