Amazeballs
Member
So is the ban an effort to help control the Market of their Wii-clone? The one that will probably be loaded with low quality "casual" games. Seems like an incredibly shitty thing to do. Sure is protecting innovation.
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Philips asking for damages, ban on sale of Wii U due to patent infringements
- Thread starter S¡mon
- Start date
So is the ban an effort to help control the Market of their Wii-clone? The one that will probably be loaded with low quality "casual" games. Seems like an incredibly shitty thing to do. Sure is protecting innovation.
shinra-bansho
Member
The Move doesn't contain a camera. The patent is specifically describing a user interface system with the inclusion of a camera (which it defines very broadly) in a pointing device, not working in unison with a pointing device.
If you actually had a method for any of those things and had enough to show the conceptual viability you could probably patent them. Whatever you describe would also need to be non-obvious, have some manner of utility, and have enough novelty.
test_account
XP-39C²
It seems that Phillips began working on iWand in 1999. And from what i understand, Uwand is more of a universal remote and not directly linked to gaming. I dont think its a Wii-clone based on those things.
AcademicSaucer
Member
holidays 2012
Hmm, well aren't there patterns for perpetua mobile? How do you make a patent for that, if you have to explain how it will work? Can't you just say something along the lines of: Its going to be a perpetuum mobile that works via weight-movement.
QuicheFontaine
Member
Right at the beginning?? When? EP1573498 was granted on 14 December 2011. Phillips approached Nintendo to agree a licensing deal in 2011. You can only really license your patent after it's granted (why would Nintendo pay for a license when they don't know what will eventually be granted), so they literally did it as soon as possible.
Yes, the European Patent Office can take a long time to grant patents. It's frustrating, and I'd certainly be in favour of them speeding up the process.
Making an actual product seems more than a "token" effort to me. It's not exactly cheap. And suing someone for infringement of your patent is not "extortion" btw.
How are they not acting in good faith? They have a granted patent for an invention and are due recompense. They even tried to settle out of court initially, which they didn't need to do - sounds like good faith to me.
How? There are so many posts like this that never go into any more detail.
And again, no one here has even read the decision (if they have, please link). You're going to cite this case, of all cases, as evidence that the patent system is broken? smh
QuicheFontaine
Member
It's the European Patent Office's fault. The UK IPO is usually much quicker than the EPO.
Edit:
Just saw this and don't want to double post
No, there aren't. People do file them from time to time (I remember seeing one when I was an Examiner). The guidance in the Manual of Patent Practice is to reject inventions operating "contrary to well-established physical laws" as lacking industrial applicability. You could probably also reject a perpetual motion device as lacking a sufficient disclosure (as no-one would be able to replicate it from the specification).
soulassssns
Banned
This seems to be the patent in question.
Filed in 2009, issued on Sept. 17th, 2013.
Don't really know what to make of it. The patent basically claims that its a universal remote.
2009? Is that Ninty or Phillips patent? Thought the Wii launched in 2006.
Terrible_Majesty
Member
i just lost all my respect for phillips. i had none before.
Lol. I can't unsee!
scakko84
Member
let's put things clear before we take a dive into religion wars: I, by no means, said that the patent system is broken beyond repair because nintendo or philips are involved.
My opinion about the patent system are super-partes and it's by no mean a religion/brand war.
What i mean by broken is that every company (Nintendo, Apple, Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Sony...) has huge portfolios of pretty much very abstract patents that could be applied probably even to breathing air (hyperbole here) and are used as guns to fight wars against competitiveness.
Dusty patents from ancient times come to life just to demand money from the people that actually implemented the real thing instead of keeping a filed patent in a dark corner "just 'cause" for 10 years.
The patent system was created for protecting innovation & innovators, but now is used as a mean against innovation because every time you create something you should worry about the thousands of guys/companies that filed a super-generic patent 10 years ago, that is most likely to be brougjt out of the pit when they see that you as a company have actually found a way to make profitable an idea that resembles at some point what they thought very genericly 10 years before.
QuicheFontaine
Member
It's a Phillips patent
Trust me, if Nintendo had a piece of evidence as compelling as "we had our product on shop shelves before Phillips filed their patent application", it would have been brought up in court.
Edit:
Religion wars? I'm sorry if I gave the impression that I care about either of these companies: I really, really, don't.
Hi-tech companies tend to have large patent portfolios because they invent a lot of things, and rely on their innovations as their edge over the competition. So they protect their intellectual property.
And as for patents being a "means against innovation", the point people are missing is that if you come up with something that infringes a dusty patent from 10 years ago, it wasn't new anyway! So you weren't really innovating, even if you were unaware of the dusty old patent and came up with it yourself separately.
There's a difference between invention and innovation. The patent system may boost invention (though I doubt it), but stifle innovation.
scakko84
Member
FTI (First to Invent) should trump, imho, FTF (First to File). I find the FITF (First Inventor to File) system a step in the right direction.
FTF is too prone to be abused for patent trolling.
Notorious_Roy
Member
Philips contacted Nintendo about this years ago. Nintendo didn't listen and Philips went to court (long story short).
maniac-kun
Member
Patenting abstract shit like that should not be allowed.
But if it wasn't being exploited, what was the practical effect of its innovation?
QuicheFontaine
Member
But in this case, it seems like it was being exploited with Philips' uWand product.
Even if it wasn't though, Philips demonstrated a novel and inventive solution to a technical problem. They made a contribution to the art. For that, they were granted a time-limited, territorially-limited monopoly, and Nintendo chose not to respect it.
This is all assuming that the patent should have been granted in the first place, and that Nintendo have infringed it. But I'm happy to give a presumption of validity to patents granted by the EPO, and a presume that the UK High Court has applied infringement tests correctly. Neither institution is infallible* - patents are revoked after grant, and High Court decisions are overturned by the Supreme Court. But until I see the decision myself, I'm going to assume they got it right.
*In fact, Colin Birss made this copyright decision a couple of years ago that I completely disagree with.
scakko84
Member
- The Philips patent has been filed in 2004
- Nintendo revealed the WiiMote at the TGS in 2005
- uWand was revealed in 2009 at IBC.
- Nintendo has been informed about the patent from Philips as i read:
source36. Philips incorporates by reference each and every allegation set forth in this Complaint.
37. United States Letters Patent No. 8,537,231 (“the ’231 patent”issued on September 17, 2013 to Gerhardus Engbertus Mekenkamp and Tim Dekker. A copy of the ’231 patent, entitled “User Interface System Based on Pointing Device” is attached hereto as Exhibit B.
38. Koninklijke Philips N.V. is the owner by assignment of the ’231 patent.
39. Philips provided actual notice of the ’231 patent to Nintendo no later than the filing date of this Complaint.
40. Nintendo has had actual knowledge of the ’231 patent no later than the filing date of this Complaint.
41. Nintendo has had actual knowledge of its infringement of the ’231 patent no later than the filing date of this Complaint.
42. Upon information and belief, Nintendo has directly infringed, induced infringement of, and contributed to infringement of one or more claims of the ’231 patent, both literally and under the doctrine of equivalents, by making, using, selling, offering for sale, and importing HCI products within the United States.
...
Dated: May 14, 2014
I pity the current patent system because it grants power to the company that filed first the idea and sat on that same idea for 8 or more years before publicly showing something that makes use of it.
But again, all of this is just my personal opinion on the patent system, i would prefer to grant power to the party that actually built & released something first than to the party that first had the idea and sat on it for years.
JB-the-Hunter
Member
Har har
That lawsuit won't fly. All of those aspects will weight against Phillips:
1- 8 years to react
2- Could be applied to many universal remote systems
3- Not even using it or competing the same market as Nintendo
They will have a hard time justifying damages and the ambiguous nature of the patent will make it hard to directly apply to Wii Remote.
1- 8 years to react
2- Could be applied to many universal remote systems
3- Not even using it or competing the same market as Nintendo
They will have a hard time justifying damages and the ambiguous nature of the patent will make it hard to directly apply to Wii Remote.
Well, I was talking about your hypothetical 'tossed in a drawer' idea, but nevermind.
Here's what I don't grasp at the moment. Assuming of course that the UK HC made the correct decision, that the patent was correctly granted, etc, etc: how can it be that Nintendo can go ahead and sell a product which involved technology that at the time was patent pending to another company? Is this case solely with sales post-patent granting in '11? Given how quickly the software/hardware market moves, would it have been appropriately legally cautious for Nintendo - having presumably become aware of the Phillips patent application post 2004 but pre Wii launch - to have simply abandoned the technology merely because the Phillips patent was in registration limbo?
QuicheFontaine
Member
1- Philips contacted Nintendo as soon as their patent was infringed, i.e. upon grant of the patent in 2011.
2- Yes, it could. But I don't see why this is relevant when it comes to the question of Nintendo infringing.
3- There's no requirement for the patentee to make use of their patent themselves.
As regards "justifying damages", they don't have to do that. The UK Patents Act allows a patentee to bring a claim for an account of profits against an infringer, i.e. all that money you made infringing my patent, give it to me.
Edit: to clarify, I'm only talking about the UK High Court decision here.
Amazeballs
Member
This isn't actually the first time Philips have used this tactic. Apparently they did something similar a few years back when they sued LED manufacturers for patent infringement. Being an invention company it's not surprising that patent royalties constitute a large portion of their income. They already receive royalties from every DVD, CD and Blu Ray wold. It's pretty scummy, no matter what the law says. The letter of the law is simply just that. It's documentation. Provisional documentation, even. It in no way dictates ethics, and if tries to it does a very inadequate job of it.
Furthermore wouldn't this patent conflict with the Gyration licensing Nintendo uses in order to manufacture and sell the Wii mote?
The uWand does show that Phillips has a stake in a market similar to the Wii's, no matter how hinky it is.
Furthermore wouldn't this patent conflict with the Gyration licensing Nintendo uses in order to manufacture and sell the Wii mote?
The uWand does show that Phillips has a stake in a market similar to the Wii's, no matter how hinky it is.
Hahaha, I'm sorry but that is some funny shit.
Amazing, the door opens to the inside and the outside!
PdotMichael
Banned
One of the largest technolgy company on this planet. They do have the focus on things which make real money and not the consumer electronics rathole.
pow, right in the kisser.
Well said.
nssdigitalchumps
Member
Probably trying to still earn some money back from this thing:
Which also ran this thing:
Which also ran this thing:
IdreamofHIME
Member
Almost a funny joke, but really go look for real. Most Tesco and ASDA stores have huge Mario Kart displays. They made a big deal of dropping WiiU, but backpeddled once that MK money train came to town.
Oh wow, I've been hanging onto a bunch of Gyration media remotes to get mouse pointer functionality out of a remote control form factor, but these uWands look awesome. Any idea when they'll release?
This is where it's bullshit. Philips didn't loose anything because of the Wiimote. I don't think you should be allowed to patent high-level concepts. i.e: I'm going to patent a flying car, a exoskeleton and a dream-altering machine right now!
Schwarzbier
Member
Maybe because move uses that color ball for tracking while the wiimote uses IR. Just a wild guess.
The wiimote is an inside-out positional tracking system. The PSmove is an outside-in positional tracking system. Similar concepts, different execution.
LiveFromKyoto
Member
WHERE IS HIS LEFT ELBOW
To clarify, both use IR LEDs, the difference is where the camera is mounted. It's inside the wiimote, looking at stationary landmarks, hence inside-out tracking. The move has a stationary camera outside the move, looking at moving LEDs, hence outside-in tracking. There are advantages and disadvantages of both (outside-in: no need to provide landmarks around room, but obfuscation of landmarks by body mass is probable, inside-out: less chance of obfuscation by body part coming between landmarks and camera, but need to place physical landmarks).
The Playstation Morpheus and Oculus Rift DK2 both are currently using outside-in positional tracking. Going forward, Oculus wants to use a "markerless" inside-out positional tracking system that'll be achieved by having an IR Laser sent through a prism to scatter trackable dots around the room similar to Kinect's laser sensor, without the need for the user to place landmarks themselves.
S¡mon;111988846 said:
I legit had no idea Philips still existed beyond the beard shaver market.
They make my electric toothbrush of which is like a vibrator of cleaning for my teeth....
ResidentDante
Member
Revenue €24.78 billion (2012)
Operating income €1.030 billion (2012)
Profit €226 million (2012)
Total assets €29.07 billion (2012)
Total equity €11.14 billion (2012)
Employees 121,284 (2012)
From here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philips