Joystick Port Patented, Now the Lawsuit 222
Panaqqa writes "It appears that Fenner Investments, a Texas based patent troll, is at it again. This time, they are suing Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo for infringing a patent they hold on joystick ports. Perhaps they felt they needed a "Plan B" now that their lawsuit against Juniper Networks, Nokia, Cisco, Alcatel and Ericsson is not going so well."
Prior Art anyone? (Score:5, Informative)
very creative (Score:5, Informative)
http://web.pdx.edu/~heiss/technotes/aiie/tn.aiie.
Whoopie.
Because Fenner's patent used a tristate buffer instead of an open collector NPN transitor they own this kind of joystick?
geesh.
Re:Patented in 2001? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Patented in 2001? (Score:3, Informative)
Bill
Its called "reexamination" (Score:5, Informative)
The U.S. Patent Office has such a procedure -- its called "reexamination." "Inter parties" reexamination allows two parties (the patentee and an accused infringer) to "reexamine" a patent before the USPTO in view of new prior art. If the USPTO agrees with the accused infringer, it can invalidate the patent. Lawsuits regarding patents in reexamination are commonly stayed (i.e. put on hold) until the reexamination terminates.
Reexams often result in dubious patents being invalidated. The reason you do not read about them more often on /. is that the purported prior art is often grossly exaggerated by the accused infringer (as in the RIM/NTP patent case), so there may not actually be sufficient grounds to invalidate the patent.
Re:Hey, remember when Universal Studios... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I'd like to see (Score:0, Informative)
Second, introducing a loser pays system isn't the answer necessarily. You have to understand that like the American system (each side pays its own costs) loser pays has some disadvantages. The risk of losing even a seemingly meritous case will prevent some meritorious victims from redress, and some lower income clients from being able to afford a suit (this would probably change the current "No fee unless you win" contingency that allows them to sue now). Also, many cases aren't clear as to whom is going to be the winner till after discovery and many more aren't clear until after trial (otherwise a smart attorney/party when faced with a losing case will settle).
Also, something you may not know is that 95% or so of cases NEVER GO TO TRIAL and are settled out of court, thus a loser-pays system may have little effect on your perceived abuses of the legal system.
Another factor is that this would introduce a legal strategy for the opposition of racking up HUGE legal bills so that the other side is threatened with a HUGE BILL if they lose - this could be applied as pressure to settle (unjustly).
Third, lawyers and clients who abuse the legal system can face sanctions including paying the attorney's fees for the opposing side. This is embodied in Federal Rule of Civil Procedure Rule 11. It provides that the lawyer or party must do a reasonable inquiry into the facts of the case and the law to make sure they are at least filing a half-way decent case.
Again, if this is a bogus lawsuit, expect the Nintendo, et.al. to get sanctions, or get the case thrown out in pretrial procedures.
Re:Hey, remember when Universal Studios... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hey, remember when Universal Studios... (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
This is an extremely rare thing and actually makes the requirement hard to fulfill. It actually limited the Graham Factor, "one of ordinary skill in the art," practically eliminating it. I do not think the CAFC truly thought this out before making a decision, because if you already the idea to combine the two technologies (and mention as much in your patent specification) then you would almost certainly have claimed it, which would make it a 35 USC 102 violation, something that is really easier to defend for a Patent Examiner.
I believe we are still waiting to see the end result of KSR v. Teleflex before SCOTUS. If SCOTUS rules with KSR and essentially says the CAFC over-stepped their bounds, then you could be looking at the mass invalidation of thousands (maybe tens of thousands) of patents. You mention the standard is hurting Microsoft and Sony, but it actually is helping another industry with as much if not more money. The pharamaceuticals and bio-tech companies love the standard as it is because it helps them get a lot of patents on new drugs passed. I believe if you review the documents from KSR v. Teleflex, you will find support for KSR's writ from a group that included Microsoft, while the big pharma's filed in opposition (supporting Teleflex).
Prior Art circa 1977 (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Prior art? (Score:2, Informative)
There is Prior Art (Score:3, Informative)
Back in the 1970s - 1980s, 8-bit computers used to measure the resistance of a joystick potentiometer using this setup:
One end of the joystick pot (VR1) is connected to the main logic supply voltage (1). The slider (3) is connected to a capacitor (C1). The other terminal of the capacitor is earthed. The junction (3) of the variable resistance and capacitor is connected via a safety resistance (R1) to a logic input (4) on IC1. An open-collector logic output is also connected to this input. To take a reading the O/C output is driven low to discharge C1, then allowed to float. At some later moment in time, the capacitor will have charged to the point where the voltage at (4) exceeds its input threshhold and the input will read as a "1". By measuring the time which elapses between the forcible discharging of C1 and the triggering of the input, we can determine the unknown resistance between (1) and (3), and thus the position of the joystick.
Even the IBM PC used this technique when a joystick port was added! Right up to the days when USB became standard for PC joysticks, every PC had a 15-pin DIN connector (colour: mustard) with four such inputs plus some switch inputs. The Atari 9-pin DIN joystick port (which would eventually go on to become a de facto standard) featured two resistance inputs which were normally used by the paddle controllers, but (because, if fitted with a simple pull-up resistance and the O/C output is left open, they are switch inputs) became the extra mouse buttons on the Amiga. All this was done long enough ago that, had any patent ever covered it (which is frankly pretty unlikely; the idea of determining an unknown resistance by using it in an oscillator and measuring the period of said oscillator should be obvious to anyone who knows how to wire a 13 amp plug, let alone an "expert" in the field), it would certainly have expired by now.
The circuit goes something like this; Note also that this method was not universal. The BBC computer used a 12-bit A-D converter (mapped to the upper 12 bits of a two-byte word), with the tracks of the pots between a reference supply and ground; the Dragon 32 used a 6-bit ADC formed from a DAC (also used, via an analogue DUX, for cassette and audio output!) and comparator.
Re:Prior art? (Score:4, Informative)
Actually, the process developed by the patent court was that a granted patent was assumed to be valid until proved otherwise, therefore what would in fact happen is that if the evidence that you infringed was strong enough, regardless of possible invalidity of the patent, the court would enjoin you from distributing your product while the case was heard!!! This is why RIM settled with NTP, remember? Of course there was a case at the Supreme Court at that time challenging the patent court's ridiculous procedure, and SCOTUS slapped down the patent court just a couple of days after RIM paid off NTP. And now new cases will proceed rather more like you describe.
And as a post a few down from yours points out, there is currently a case before SCOTUS that may result in restoring sanity to the evaluation of prior art and non-obviousness...
Re:Prior art? (Score:5, Informative)
I remember trying to learn to program the PC joystick in assembly language around 1993, and it was a real pain in the ass to get it right. You had to constantly poll the joystick and put in all kinds of delay loops. Apparently, proper analog-to-digital converters were very expensive when the PC game port was designed, and so this crude circuit design was used instead. See the wikipedia article for more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_port#Circuits [wikipedia.org]
Bottom line: this patent ain't new technology. In fact, it's OBSOLETE technology. There are much better ways to get an analog measurement from a joystick, and there were even in 1998 when the patent was filed.
Nintendo has patents on all there ports (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hey, remember when Universal Studios... (Score:2, Informative)
Patent Pirates (Score:3, Informative)
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Re:Join the USPTO! (Score:2, Informative)
The problem is not in the trenches but in a management culture, developed over decades (starting back in the late 1960's) that based patent examination as a process measured, effectively, by easily determined metrics such as number of applications processed per unit time ("Hours per balanced disposals") and timeliness of actions (oldest new application moved every other bi-week, amendments acted on within two months). Although quality is nominally figured into examiner evaluation, this requires a manager to actually look at the claims and prior art and make a judgment, if necessary, finding better prior art to show poor quality. This would require real work on the managers part. On the other hand, boasting to Congress how the PTO has processed a record number of applications and reduced pendency is easier to show, so this is what PTO management has done.
The sad state of quality, however, has not gone unnoticed recently, so the management has had to react; unfortunately, unwilling to seriously scrap the process-oriented system their solutions involve "bolting on" various review oriented initiatives, such as "quality review" (a separate unit that samples allowed applications) and "second pair of eyes" review for all allowances in the art unit, all of which are after the fact and fail to tackle the basic flaw of the "time in motion" mentality.
The result of this is an appalling actual level of quality and very low morale in the examining corps. The high attrition rate that complicates PTO staffing goals includes quits and firings due to failure to meet process goals; I'm not sure many, if any, are based on real quality issues such as allowing an unpatentable claim.
Re:Business based on law suites (Score:3, Informative)
Almost everyone would exercise a lot more caution handling a pot of water at a full rolling boil on their laps than a cup of coffee. However, McDonalds was selling something that looked just like the latter, but was actually almost as dangerous as the former. Moreover, they had received multiple reports of injuries due to this, and did nothing.
My attempt at interpretting the patent (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't just obvious, it's necessary! Anyone even half-assed skilled in the art would know that you need to do something to connect a 5 V TTL output to a 3.3 V LVTTL input.
Okay, so maybe their something is novel or nonobvious. In fact, it's neither; they're using a tri-state buffer's threshold voltage as a comparator.
Basically, digital logic circuits can have any manner of analog voltages applied to them. Circuit designers specify these voltages as Vil (voltage input low threshold) and Vih (voltage input high threshold). Any input voltage below Vil will generate an digital output voltage below Vol (voltage output low), which is usually interpreted as logic 0. Any input voltage above Vih will, correspondingly, generate a voltage above Voh, which is usually interpreted as logic 1.
They specify that their buffer has hysteresis, so that way it won't suffer from the metastability that usually occurs when you feed a digital circuit an input voltage between Vil and Vih.
Keep in mind that these components are all COTS (common-off-the-shelf) parts.
They just drain a capacitor, which causes the input of the buffer to go below Vil, so the buffer outputs a logic 0, which raises a PCin bit (whose voltage level is not the 5V joystick level), let the capacitor charge through the potentiometer whose resistance is proportional to the current joystick position (which cap is being charged by a 5V supply), and when the charging capacitor exceeds Vih of the input buffer, the buffer outputs a logic 1, causing the PCin bit to go low again.
There's some miscellaneous stuff about resetting, the order in which to apply signals to make the process work, etc. But, basically, the whole patent is bollocks.
I also like how they have a small piece in their patent filing about how those skilled in the art will see obvious ways to modify their patent's invention, and that these modifications are still "in the spirit" of what the patent covers and are thus covered by the patent.
And back up again slightly revised (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Business based on law suites (Score:3, Informative)
The fact that neither the cup or the lid was designed for the temperature that McD's was serving the coffee at had something to do with it. Stella Liebeck wasn't exactly the first person to suffer serious burns either. And incidentally, she only sued for the medical expenses -- the jury awarded the large punitive damages (that were later reduced in a secret settlement) because of some pretty outrageous conduct by McDonalds, including but not limited to going to the press and smearing Liebeck publicly as a gold-digger. Personally, I don't think they paid enough.
I remember getting McDonalds coffee in those days -- the lid would just come right off because the heat from the coffee deformed it. Nasty coffee, but bitter cold winters, and they were along the way to the bus stop.
Totally Bogus (Score:3, Informative)