By James Sherwood for The Register. This story
has been reproduced with permission.
Nintendo has vowed to fight a court order demanding it pay $21m
(£10.7m/€13.5m) to a US gaming company for patent infringements
associated with controllers for the Wii and GameCube.
Although specific details of the violation of Anascape's
intellectual property rights haven’t been disclosed yet, the US
court found that Nintendo had trampled over 12 different patents
owned by the Texas-based firm.
The company owns a number of controller patents, ranging from
one detailing a stick-type remote controller with analogue pressure
sensor(s) through to a patent for a regular-looking game controller
with analogue pressure sensors.
Several Nintendo controllers were implicated in the case,
including the Wii Classic controller and GameCube control. Nintendo
is thought safe on the motion-sensor side of things though, because
the patent infringements don’t relate to any accelerometer
technology used in Wii controllers.
But a Nintendo spokesman has since claimed that, after it
appeals the ruling, the company expects the damages awarded to be
“significantly” reduced.
At least Nintendo’s executives can use the boxing game on
Wii Sports to vent some of their money-loss rage.
© The
Register 2008
