Nintendo Controllers May Soon Be Banned
By Jonathan on Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008 at 11:35 AM PST In Game Companies, Game Consoles, Game Related Laws, Gamer Life, Games Industry, Nintendo, Nintendo
Like using your Gamecube or Classic Controller to play games on the Wii? Then you’d better be very nice to them since they may soon become scarce. Thanks to a patent lawsuit, Nintendo may be facing a ban on Gamecube, Wavebird, and Classic controllers (the Wii-mote and Nunchuk are excluded from the possible ban). A judge recently rejected a bid by the company to overturn a $21 million patent-infringment suit from Anascape Ltd. Stephany covered this yesterday but now we’ve learned that the judge also said he would stop the sale of those controllers. Right now, the ban is on hold while Nintendo appeals the case. To avoid the ban, they would have to either pay the full amount of set up funds to pay royalties. The patent in question was licensed by Sony in 2004, and Microsoft recently settled a similar lawsuit back in May.
My best guess though is that this isn’t something to worry about too much. With so many consoles already on the market, Nintendo will probably opt to just pay Anascape if they lose the appeal; they’re just hoping they won’t have to. Still, I may have to forgo my habit of chucking controllers across the room during a heated game of Pikmin.
Via Bloomberg
This is bullshit. FUCK SONY. I don’t dig the Wii but these are Gamecube controllers..THEY’RE PRO GODDAMNIT
This sounds dumb… Does this Analscape have a website? Is it even a real company or just some ******** ***** that makes lame patents and then sues others to get money?
Anascape Ltd. is a license and invention holding company…they don’t build or sell anything…hence no real need for a website.
Regardless of how we feel about this the bottom line is that they do have a case as long as they hold the patent….i doubt this’ll be the last we hear from them though.