Nintendo faces lawsuit over Wiimote but appears safe

Stan Beer
Sunday, 10 December 2006 06:02

IT Industry - Strategy

The phenomenal early success the Nintendo Wii and its star attraction, the Wiimote, is beginning to cause the company some problems. First there was the issue of of Wiimotes flying out of users hands. Now a California-based company has filed a patent infringement suit against the Wiimote. However, the Wiimote appears safe from the claim.

Camarillo-based Interlink electronics, a publicly traded company which manufactures mainly business related human interface products, has alleged that the Wiimote infringes a patent it has for a one handed wireless pointing device that is designed to be used as replacement for a computer mouse. In the patent, the device is described as a "trigger operated electronic device".

An examination of both devices and their means of operation, however, indicates that the Wii would appear to be out of the firing line.

The patent drawings of the Interlink pointing device show some superficial similarities in both appearance and controls to the Wii, including the shape and trigger control. The purpose of the Interink device is obviously intended for a different application to Wii.

However, the key question of the lawsuit will be whether the technology used by Wii to achieve its wireless motion sensitivity is just another application of the patented motion sensitive technology developed by Interlink.

Interlink is claiming to have suffered damages including the loss of royalties that it should have gained from Nintendo's use of the Wiimote.

There is, however, a key difference between the Wiimote and the Interlink device in the method of their operation. The Wiimote achieves its motion sensitivity through translating the three-dimensional movement of the controller through space into actions on the screen.

The Interlink patent describes a device-mounted pressure sensitive pad to move a mouse pointer ("a flexible material mounted such that pressure applied to the flexible material in different directions and positions acts to change the electrical relationship between the conductive elements on the board and thereby vary an output signal from the electronic circuit"). Obviously, this is different to how Wii works.

Nintendo will not comment on the lawsuit but the chances are that it will not lose like Sony did when it got pinged for royalties by Immersion for the use of rumble technology.