Well that's interesting. It looks like MS "settled" in an attempt to stick it to Sony in that if Sony settled they get a kick back from Immersion. Isn't that illegal? I could have sworn there is something called an anti-kick back law somewhere.
Better yet, why would immersion agree to that? MS gave you 26 mil, but you have to give 15 mil back if Sony settles...was the lawyer at the bargaining table on crack that day?
Last I checked, we live in America where you're free to make any contract/licensing you want as long as it is not for an illegal purpose.
It's pretty simple really. MS said "we'll give you 25mil for the exclusive rights to rumble. We don't care that Nintendo makes consoles, but Sony is after our demographic. So, for an exclusive license, we'll give you 25 mil, but if you allow sony in any way to add this patented feature to their devices, then it's not an exclusive license and you owe us 15 mil because you didn't give us the exclusivity you promised us."
So, if you're immersion, the price to Sony is something in excess of 15mil. Anything less is a loss to Immersion, anything in excess is worth breaking MS's exclusive license and paying them their liquidated damages of 15 mil.
“An engineer explained to us that hundreds of ear impressions were gathered in the name of research, and while each one obviously boasted its own unique shape and size, one single characteristic remained uniform across the board: the entrance into the ear canal is not a perfect circle, it's an oval.”
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Well that's interesting. It looks like MS "settled" in an attempt to stick it to Sony in that if Sony settled they get a kick back from Immersion. Isn't that illegal? I could have sworn there is something called an anti-kick back law somewhere.
Better yet, why would immersion agree to that? MS gave you 26 mil, but you have to give 15 mil back if Sony settles...was the lawyer at the bargaining table on crack that day?
Last I checked, we live in America where you're free to make any contract/licensing you want as long as it is not for an illegal purpose.
It's pretty simple really. MS said "we'll give you 25mil for the exclusive rights to rumble. We don't care that Nintendo makes consoles, but Sony is after our demographic. So, for an exclusive license, we'll give you 25 mil, but if you allow sony in any way to add this patented feature to their devices, then it's not an exclusive license and you owe us 15 mil because you didn't give us the exclusivity you promised us."
So, if you're immersion, the price to Sony is something in excess of 15mil. Anything less is a loss to Immersion, anything in excess is worth breaking MS's exclusive license and paying them their liquidated damages of 15 mil.
It's math, and it's really not that hard.