Thursday, September 18, 2008

Nintendo Under Investigation by ITC

The International Trade Commission announced in August that Hillcrest Labs has filed a complaint on the Wii remote controller.  Hillcrest says that the basis of this controller violates the patent on the former motion-sensitive controller, which is known as the "loop".  The "loop" is a ring shaped remote controller that lets you control the television based on where you point, instead of using buttons.
The ITC will be conducting an investigation looking for possible patent violations.  When Hillcrest was asked what they wanted to happen as a result, they said that they would like a "cease-and-desist" order on Nintendo.  Just because the ITC has decided to take an action on looking into the possibility of patent violation, doesn't mean that they have made any decisions on the case thus far.
With the extreme popularity of the Nintendo Wii, this could possibly have very bad effects.  If the case is ruled in favor of Hillcrest, the worst case scenario could include Nintendo having to stop selling the Wii, and its remotes until a settlement is reached.

http://arstechnica.com/journals/thumbs.ars/2008/09/18/nintendo-under-investigation-by-itc

2 comments:

Amanda said...

Everybody knows what a Nintendo Wii is. My roommate’s nephew knows what it is, my teachers know what it is, my boss knows what it is, and my dad knows what it is. Few know what the “loop” is. I had to research on Google images to figure out what it was and what it looked like. It looks nothing like the Wii. Even though it may have similar functions as the Wii, that doesn’t mean that Nintendo violated the patent of the loop. If Hillcrest were to win the case, I still don’t know if consumers would buy the loop to replace the Wii because of the brand name, Nintendo that everybody knows.

William said...

Why doesn't nintendo just pay them off or something...then this Hillcrest company can make some money out of it, and Nintendo can keep selling the Wii. I've never heard of this Hillcrest crap but it sounds like it could use some money.

I agree with Amandas comment about how it violates the patent the protects the loop. Yeah it has a motion detector, but a lot of things do...