It's been a good day for Nintendo hardware at Leipzig, and a bad day for Nintendo the company, which is embroiled in yet another technology lawsuit. As reported by Bloomberg, a company called Hillcrest Laboratories Inc filed a complaint on August 20 with the International Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. Hillcrest is alleging that Nintendo is unlawfully using their motion control technologies and wishes to block future sales of the Wii. The ITC would have the power to block future imports if the case is decided in Hillcrest's favor.

"While Hillcrest Labs has a great deal of respect for Nintendo and the Wii, Hillcrest Labs believes that Nintendo is in clear violation of its patents and has taken this action to protect its intellectual property rights," the company said in a statement.

Comments [6]

post a comment

  • First
    • Jump To Page:
    • [ 1 ]
  • Last
DJKennethA

With all of these lawsuits I'm starting to wonder if people are really going after nintendo because of the wii's popularity and them knowing they can get tons of money rather then it really being an infringement.

holy run on sentence batman! ( sorry about that lol )

This whole thing is starting to remind me of the woman who spilled coffee on herself at mcdonald's and sued them because it was....OMG HOT

mazinja

DJKennethA: said coffee was apparently hot enough to almost instantly give her third degree burns, which I guess is a point that goes beyond 'hot' and into 'goddamn dangerous'.

As for the Wii lawsuit... another one? Isn't this like the second or third company that has claimed that the Wii uses their technology for motion sensors? Srsly o_o

DJKennethA

@mazninja: that may be true, BUT you would expect coffee to be hot lol. But yeah I forgot that one piece. Though you should still not be shocked when coffee spills on you and it's hot.

@voice of reason: yeah that's def where this is going. Everyone wants a piece of what the guy on top is making, and apparently this is the easiest way to do it

Lynxara

To be honest, it just makes me think that American patent law is really broken. It's sort of obvious that Nintendo didn't check American patents when they developed the Wii because they knew their scientists were basically working in isolation. That's how Nintendo always develops new hardware. American patent law is such that even if you come up with a similar idea totally separately, the holder of the original patent can sue your pants off for it, and registering technology patents is much easier than it should be.

DJKennethA

Well that sucks. Thanks for clearing up how patent laws work. Sounds a little like copyright law and how that works.

  • First
    • Jump To Page:
    • [ 1 ]
  • Last

Post a Comment