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[WolvenOne]

Because they filed this patent in 2009 and was rewarded it in 2013.

I'm no lawyer, but I thought you couldn't be issued a patent on an existing item unless you have shown it to be materially different. (I'm assuming that Nintendo has their own sets of patents to draw upon.)

Wait a second though.

They are also claiming the original Wii violates their patent as well, but that product went to market before they even filed a patent.

Does this not definitively prove that there are pre-existing works, that effectively void this patent?

 

[The12thGripper]

Wait a second though.

They are also claiming the original Wii violates their patent as well, but that product went to market before they even filed a patent.

Does this not definitively prove that there are pre-existing works, that effectively void this patent?

It was nice knowing you, Phillips.

 

[Effect]

Wait a second though.

They are also claiming the original Wii violates their patent as well, but that product went to market before they even filed a patent.

Does this not definitively prove that there are pre-existing works, that effectively void this patent?

This is why Nintendo is going to appeal and likely win as has happen in the past.

 

[ChipotIe]

Fuck patent trolling bullshit. This is one of the more disgusting oversights in American law... the ability to vaguely describe a thing and then own the nebulous "IT" and then having the ability to file a claim someone for actually creating it and making money off of it.

There are entire organizations dedicated to sifting through patents so they can buy any off they think they can use in large scale lawsuits, going around and forcing businesses to go to court, or in most cases settle with them. Patent trolling is a billion dollar industry in of itself.

 

[shinra-bansho]

Patent was first filed in 2002.

Interesting about light gun games, still sounds a bit different than the basic premise of Phillips' patent?

 

[crinale]

Wait a second though.

They are also claiming the original Wii violates their patent as well, but that product went to market before they even filed a patent.

Does this not definitively prove that there are pre-existing works, that effectively void this patent?

The issue isn't the patent filed at 2009 IMO. Someone posted:

And I'm not sure where you're getting this "Patent was filed after the Wii was launched". The Phillips patents in question are EP0808484 and EP1573498, which were filed in 1995 and 2002 repectively.

 

[zashga]

Several years late to this party, aren't they? The Wiimote went on sale in 2006, which means Nintendo did their own R&D (and filed their own patents) well before that. Seems like the only way to lose this lawsuit is gross legal incompetence or some weird technicality. Weird technicalities are the name of the game in patent law, so who knows.

 

[Basileus777]

Fuck patent trolling bullshit. This is one of the more disgusting oversights in American law... the ability to vaguely describe a thing and then own the nebulous "IT" and then having the ability to file a claim someone for actually creating it and making money off of it.

There are entire organizations dedicated to sifting through patents so they can gobble them up so they can go around and force businesses to go to court, or in most cases settle with them. Patent trolling is a billion dollar industry in of itself.

American law? The case Phillips won was in the UK.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

So, what will realistically happen if Nintendo loses their appeal?

 

[Gin]

good luck with the lawsuit Phillips.. if there is one thing I learned.. is that Nintendo lawyers are godlike ninjas

 

[Laconic]

So, what will realistically happen if Nintendo loses their appeal?

Hopefully they tell the UK courts to piss off, and pull out of the UK market.

 

[Nekofrog]

American law? The case Phillips won was in the UK.

shhh, around here we don't read actual articles or posts before spewing off random bullshit

 

[Jimmyfenix]

Hopefully they tell the UK courts to piss off, and pull out of the UK market.

We won't miss them.

 

[Final Verdict]

Sounds like Philips is trying to screw Nintendo for all their worth.

 

[Owwari]

We won't miss them.

Can't miss something that never happened!

 

[RMS Gigantic]

good luck with the lawsuit Phillips.. if there is one thing I learned.. is that Nintendo lawyers are godlike ninjas

That was my thought as the discussion entered this page. Nintendo layers' past work with regard to copyright/patent infringements include proving that Universal Studios can't sue over King Kong because King Kong doesn't belong to them to begin with, and taking patents away from patent trolls as partial repayment for a lost lawsuit and its appeals.


Nintendo has lost their occasional cases, but when they win a case, they win a case.


... Now I want to see an Ace Attorney game based on cases like these, where you can get ranks from cases, and A ranks are where you win the case but S ranks are accomplished by achieving results comparable to what Nintendo's lawyers have done....

 

[HighResTomato]

Hopefully they tell the UK courts to piss off, and pull out of the UK market.

This could become a EU wide sales ban like when a judge in Germany issued a X360 ban requested by Motorola on Googles behalf. It was overturned later though.

 

[CadetMahoney]

Hopefully they pull out of the UK market.

Does that mean they have to pull out of the EU in general?

 

[AcademicSaucer]

Hopefully they tell the UK courts to piss off, and pull out of the UK market.

The UK market doesnt want the Wii U, so nothing will really change

 

[IrishNinja]

Uh, this is Philips. You know, the company that invented the Cassette Tape, Boombox, VCR, CD, Laserdisc, DVD, light bulb, electric razor, 3D x-ray, etc. I'd hardly call them a troll.

wait, did Phillips really invent all these?

 

[Ivan 3414]

Uh, this is Philips. You know, the company that invented the Cassette Tape, Boombox, VCR, CD, Laserdisc, DVD, light bulb, electric razor, 3D x-ray, etc. I'd hardly call them a troll.

Phillips invented the lightbulb.

.ok.

 

[Dre_G_Writer]

Wait........we're talking about THIS Philips???

That company still exist???

 

[acm2000]

Phillips invented the lightbulb.

.ok.

They invented quite a few different types of light bulb, they have achieved a LOT than most people think

 

[Ruben0s]

Yeah it still exist. Its core business has changed though. They focus on niche markets with high profit margins. So almost no more consumer electronic products, like TV's etc.

 

[Renekton]

Yeah it still exist. Its core business has changed though. They focus on niche markets with high profit margins. So almost no more consumer electronic products, like TV's etc.

They still sell tons of those in emerging markets.

So it seems their next core business is patent trolling.

 

[Terrell]

Not surprised by the timing. They announced this quite soon after Nintendo won its last lawsuit against them for the Wii Remote infringing on patents. Philips was just kind enough to wait its turn.

 

[Ruben0s]

They still sell tons of those in emerging markets.

So it seems their next core business is patent trolling.

Thats because asian companies pay philips to use their name on their products.

If I remember right TP vision bought the rights to use philips name on their tv's etc.

 

[Squozen]

This isn't news. Every large company gets sued for patent infringement, because the patent system is broken.

 

[sinnergy]

Wait........we're talking about THIS Philips???

That company still exist???

Yes , The empire state building is light by Philips Most living-rooms, as the make high0quality LED lights, and probably the MRI scanner you lay in in the hospital is made by them.

 

[Mistle]

Can't stop laughing at this, its so extremely terrible haha. I know its only point is to get the device across, but why can't they hire someone who as at least attempted drawing since they were in primary school?

 

[zomgbbqftw]

So, what will realistically happen if Nintendo loses their appeal?

Nintendo will pay up. If they don't then they will be found in contempt of court and barred from operating in the UK until such time as they apologise to the courts and pay up. Apple almost went down this road and they were told to pay up and apologise to the courts or have their UK operations suspended from trading.

No company with shareholders would defy the courts in a major country. It sets a bad precedent that the directors don't respect the rule of law and it would weigh them down in other court cases they may have, especially in the EU where the UK and German patent laws are comparable. In a worst case scenario Philips could get an EU wide ban if they refused to pay up in the UK under single market rules, but that would require an ECJ injunction which takes time.

 

[Renekton]

Thats because asian companies pay philips to use their name on their products.

If I remember right TP vision bought the rights to use philips name on their tv's etc.

So they are OEMs??

Holy crap I didn't know that.

 

[wsippel]

Well Philips does use the patent though.

http://www.uwand.com/smartertvgaming/


"The patented uWand technology was initially developed in 1999 from conceptual research into the potential adoption of pointing technologies in a living room environment.
Since then hundreds man-years of work has been invested in pointing research and development by a highly skilled multi-disciplinary team, ranging from engineers, computer vision expert, psychologist, and anthropologist, with a broad understanding of all user interaction paradigms and human behaviour."

So hundreds man-year invested in the technology and nitendo copies it and has almost no r&d cost. Thank god we got patents. Imagine a world without patents no-one would invest in r&d because you can copy ideas for free.

A world without patents would be unfair imagine a company spending a lot of money in research & development and it has to earn it back by including the costs in the price of the product. Than another company just copy paste the idea and basically can put the same product at a lower cost on the market. The company that did all the research could go bankrupt, because the competitor can produce the same product at a lower price.

Actually, it seems Philips developed something, put it in a drawer for more than a decade, noticed Nintendo had success with the Wiimote, and copied it, motion sensors and all, using their old tech as a base. Philips even used Wiimote comparison to market uWand.

 

[QuicheFontaine]

Nintendo will pay up. If they don't then they will be found in contempt of court and barred from operating in the UK until such time as they apologise to the courts and pay up. Apple almost went down this road and they were told to pay up and apologise to the courts or have their UK operations suspended from trading.

No company with shareholders would defy the courts in a major country. It sets a bad precedent that the directors don't respect the rule of law and it would weigh them down in other court cases they may have, especially in the EU where the UK and German patent laws are comparable. In a worst case scenario Philips could get an EU wide ban if they refused to pay up in the UK under single market rules, but that would require an ECJ injunction which takes time.

I think people thinking this will turn into an EU-wide ban are getting confused by the name of the Phillips patent. EP1573498 is an EP(UK) patent, which is effectively the same as a GB national patent. There is no pan-European patent, and no pan-European patent court (yet). The European Patent Office provides a unitary prosecution route through to grant, but upon grant you have to decide in which countries you want to validate (i.e. render effective) your patent. This can involve official fees and translation fees, and doing it in all 40 EPC countries is pretty damn expensive. After a nine-month post-grant opposition period for central limitation and revocation, you're just left with a bundle of national patents - EP(DE), EP(FR), etc. - and you have to pay renewal fees on each of them every year to keep them in force.

This is an infringement action on a UK patent in a UK court - that's all. An EU-wide ban is not a remedy available to Phillips here. As you can see from the European Patent Register, Phillips has let their EP patents lapse in a bunch of EU countries, probably because they weren't selling much in those territories and the renewal fees got too much. So if you want to infringe EP1573498 in, say, Romania, go ahead.

As Zomg says above, an EU-wide ban may arise from single-market rules, but that's not really a patent-y matter. It's more of a not-doing-what-judges-tell-you-to-do matter, which is never a good idea! Apple almost found that out when they failed to properly apologise to Samsung.

Anyway, also as Zomg says, they will pay (if their appeal is unsuccessful), because anything else would be insane.

 

[RooMHM]

So basically, they're just saying "We kind of sort of thought of something similar, though not really, and even though we haven't done anything with it, you're infringing our patent!"
Typical.

This is how patent works in the US.

 

[wildfire]

This is the fundamental problem with patents in my opinion.

"Sorry you can't do that, I thought of it first"

Being able to patent something you have no intention of manufacturing is one of the things keeping actual patent trolls in business. Can you imagine the mess if patents had existed when lots of cavemen simultaneously thought of the wheel?

Phillips didn't think it up. They spent money and effort on research and development. Patents are not given for ideas only successful implementations.

The problem with patents is when multiple parties are working toward the same goal and patent filings are first come only served. Until the patent bureau is given a large enough budget to rigorously verify parties had independently worked on their RnD there aren't any available viable options to improve this.

 

[wildfire]

wait, did Phillips really invent all these?

Philips invented a ton of shit, including MRIs and PET scanners.


Phillips aren't patent trolls as some ignorant posters laughably called them.

 

[CadetMahoney]

They focus on niche markets with high profit margins. So almost no more consumer electronic products, like TV's etc.

So it seems their next core business is patent trolling.

i loled.

 

[Bulbagarden]

Phillips aren't patent trolls, but their actions in this specific case are very similar to the modus operandi of patent trolls. Instead of approaching Nintendo right at the beginning as they should have, they failed to act on the patents and instead waited until the Wii had been on sale for many years and had proven itself successful and profitmaking.

Now granted, unlike true patent trolls they have at least tried to commercialize these patents. However I think we can agree that they've really made only a token effort to leverage these two patents themselves with the uWand. Furthermore, given when that device was announced to the public, it's safe to say they only bothered to make that effort after their initial efforts to extort money from Nintendo over these patents failed.

I just don't see how the actions of Phillips here are the actions of a company acting in good faith.

 

[OrbitalBeard]

Nintendo will pay up. If they don't then they will be found in contempt of court and barred from operating in the UK until such time as they apologise to the courts and pay up. Apple almost went down this road and they were told to pay up and apologise to the courts or have their UK operations suspended from trading.

No company with shareholders would defy the courts in a major country. It sets a bad precedent that the directors don't respect the rule of law and it would weigh them down in other court cases they may have, especially in the EU where the UK and German patent laws are comparable. In a worst case scenario Philips could get an EU wide ban if they refused to pay up in the UK under single market rules, but that would require an ECJ injunction which takes time.

Thanks. What I'm really curious about though is how much Philips would realistically be awarded and if the company would actually be forced to stop selling Wii and Wii U consoles as part of the judgement.

 

[Mdk7]

I'm seriously in tears at the drawing, ahahah!

 

[SoulUnison]

"The user interaction system comprises a portable pointing device (101) connected to a camera (102) and sending pictures to a digital signal processor (120), capable of recognizing an object (130) and a command given by the user (100) by moving the pointing device (101) in a specific way, and controlling an electrical apparatus (110) on the basis of this recognition."

It actually doesn't sound that vague, to me. It sounds like it's *exactly* describing the basic functionality of the WiiMote in "pointer" mode EXCEPT that the Wii/Wii U use an infrared light bar rather than a "camera," which the patent specifically mentions.

 

[Martian]

Seems like an awfully abstract thing to patent.

Can I just patent a device that controls any other electronic device in the house (without giving more information than a shoddy paint-drawing) and sue anyone that makes anything like that?
Should be pretty bad business, because I then now patent flying cars, hyper speed airplanes, hoverboards and a sugary drink that everyone will love someday

 

[NeoRausch]

It actually doesn't sound that vague, to me. It sounds like it's *exactly* describing the basic functionality of the WiiMote in "pointer" mode EXCEPT that the Wii/Wii U use an infrared light bar rather than a "camera," which the patent specifically mentions.

the Wii remote has a build in camera to "see" the infrared.
patent is still pretty vague.

 

[scakko84]

The second patent mentions a wireless device that can be controlled via a secondary device through motion input.

The only thing i get from this is that the patent system is really broken beyond fixing.

 

[dr. apocalipsis]

Yes, they still exist mostly as a devices company.

Shocked when I learned about their dildo and sexual toys market:

Spoiler

You all know what is the next joke to do.

 

[Smiles and Cries]

so what of the ban? when does that take effect?

 

[MrNyarlathotep]

It actually doesn't sound that vague, to me. It sounds like it's *exactly* describing the basic functionality of the WiiMote in "pointer" mode EXCEPT that the Wii/Wii U use an infrared light bar rather than a "camera," which the patent specifically mentions.

If its describing anything its describing the Move / Eye combo.

the Wii remote has a build in camera to "see" the infrared.
patent is still pretty vague.

It is really arguable as to whether an IR sensor is a 'camera'.

 

[MisterHero]

The Wiimote finally gets accused of resembling a TV remote.

 

[NeoRausch]

If its describing anything its describing the Move / Eye combo.



It is really arguable as to whether an IR sensor is a 'camera'.

as far as I know it's called "camera" in Nintendos patent. which could bite them ass.

but Nintendo is going to pay up anyways. what are a few millions if you can sell your system.