Sony patents its own version of the Wiimote and sensor bar
Well well well, what do we have here? We've just come across a new Sony patent for "an input device providing users with a pointing capability includes a sender portion and a receiver portion." The patent goes on to describe how it should be used, saying: "For example, if the target area is the screen of a television set and the typical user environment is a user's living room, then the sender portion 100 should disperse the pattern enough to cover one or more sensors of the receiver portion at distances from the target area typical for television viewing." That sounds an awful lot like the Wii bar and the Wiimote, wouldn't you say? However, this patent was filed on May 27, 2005, which may be what allows Sony to get around Nintendo's presumed prior art in this domain. But as usual, we're not lawyers, which means we really can't compete with professional attorneys in terms of their knowledge of patent law, not to mention absurdly vague rhetoric.
[Via digg]
