Nintendo may have played with the wrong sticks
Analog sticks, that is. What did you think I mean, you sick bastards? Anyway, Texas-based company Anascape Ltd. recently won its ongoing lawsuit with Nintendo, which was based on the rights of the analog stick used on the game company’s GameCube, Wavebird, and Wii Classic controllers. As 1up.com reports, all of those may soon be pulled off the shelves. And yes, that even includes the few dozen GameCubes that are still taking up space in local retail stores because - duh! - the system comes with a controller.
So what does this mean for Nintendo? Well, to be honest, probably not a whole heck of a lot in the immediate future. The Cube is dead, so anyone who wanted it most likely has one by now. A Link to the Past and Super Metroid have come out on the Virtual Console, and Smash Bros. Brawl has already been released on the Wii, meaning most fans have already gotten their hands on a Classic Controller or Wavebird. Still, over the long run, it will obviously put a damper on Nintendo’s attachment sales, and newer players will be forced to use some newfangled, yet-to-be-designed controller in order to avoid being pwned in Mario Kart.
Anascape is hoping to ban the sales of the controllers starting tomorrow, July 23, but that is most likely going to be postponed due to the (obvious) appeal from Nintendo. Strange dealings in the gaming world today, that’s for sure.
Latest Update
Direct info from the reporter who penned the Bloomberg news article about the case, Susan Decker: She says that the rulings for appeals court cases generally take at least 9 months to reach, with many taking upwards of a year to 18 months. That’s good news for Wii fans, as that means the ban will be delayed, but it’s not great news for Nintendo, since they’ll be fighting in court for a long time to come. Of course, the option of a settlement is out there, as Microsoft already did with Anascape, but the way Nintendo has been talking about this issue, I think they’re in it for the long haul.
July 24th, 2008 at 11:37 am
They’d probably save money in the long run by settling out of court than paying for lawyer and court fees. Still, I think it’s kind of ridiculous that this small “company” (probably one dude) made a patent and just didn’t do anything with it. Then he waited for someone else to hit it big to decide to move in and sue, as if the Gamecube controllers didn’t even exist for half a decade.
July 24th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
True, but then, the question is whether there is really a “long run” here? The new Wii controllers aren’t impacted and Nintendo wil be sure to not use any infringing ideas in any new controller they might design. So this only impacts new sales of old controllers, and that, in theory, is not a long term kind of thing.
In general, I never know how to feel about these things. On one hand, I have actually contributed to a couple of patents in my day, and I know that a) its titanic work (usually takes about a year, even for something simple) and b) its often the only way for a small guy to protect himself from big companies simply stealing his idea. On the other hand, there have been a ton of cases where, like you say, people patent essentially trivial things, and wait quietly for someone big to actually use it in a broadly sold product so that they could then sue for millions in infringement money. This is probably such a case; the story of SCO and Unix also comes to mind.
The true culprit is actually the Patent Office, which is full of people who are ignorant enough to actually grant such patents. Fact is, this guys patent application should never have been approved because the invention was a trivial derivation on technology that already existed (i.e. older controllers). Alas, the whole patenting process has been overrun by lawyers and thoroughly broken for years…
August 21st, 2008 at 2:23 pm
[…] E3 conference. Then word that their GameCube, Wavebird, and Classic controllers were found to be infringemtns of copyrighted patents. Now, new litigation is heading the way of the big N, this time from Hillcrest Laboratories, Inc., […]