Sony being sued for $90M??!!

Bill Ravens wrote on 3/28/2005, 6:51 AM
Sony has been ordered by a Federal District Court to halt sales of its games consoles in the U.S. along with paying $90 million dollars to Immerson for patent infringement. The court is upholding a ruling made last year where they awarded Immerson $82 million, the slightly higher payout adds interest to the total. Sony has stated it will continue to sell the Playstation, Playstation 2, the 2 controllers, and 47 games as the appeal court date is set before the date Sony has to stop selling.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/28/2005, 8:39 AM
wonder what patent they infringed on...
Rednroll wrote on 3/28/2005, 8:55 AM
Do you have a link to a reference article? I have (3) PS2's, which I run together over a network in my house. One's in need of some repair, I believe the CD/DVD optics needs to be replaced. So I might have to jump on purchasing a new one if it costs too much to repair it. I don't like the new slimline version because you currently can't install a hard drive to it and the primary game I play is Socom 2, which they released new maps for, where you need the HD installed to play them. The new PS3 is targeted for release late this year, and so is Socom 3.....I can't live without my Socom fix.
Bill Ravens wrote on 3/28/2005, 9:32 AM
http://www.anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=24019
p@mast3rs wrote on 3/28/2005, 9:32 AM
its on the front page at yahoo.
Bill Ravens wrote on 3/28/2005, 12:28 PM
Immersion claimed Sony's PlayStation products infringed on patents related to "vibro-tactile" technologies that simulate the sense of touch in videogame play. The suit specifically names the PlayStation consoles, Dual Shock controllers and 47 games.
vitalforce2 wrote on 3/28/2005, 1:49 PM
Hey, it's Sony. Deck chair off the Titanic.
busterkeaton wrote on 3/28/2005, 2:11 PM
I went to my brother's for Easter yesterday and before I stepped in the house, my 11 year-old nephew said I had to come upstairs to see "the major advance in technology." He seemed excited so I followed him up and he showed me his new PlayStation Portable which he said he bought with his own money. He wouldn't tell me when he got his "own money" from. He was really into it and he played the movie Spiderman 2 for me. It was pretty cool.

Anybody know what format the PSP movies are? It came on this little Sony Universal Media Disc.
TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/28/2005, 5:42 PM
Doesn't this mean Nintendo & Microsoft could be in violation too, or perhads they paid for the patent? Or MS said "you sue us & we BUY the company who owns the patent". :)
TheHappyFriar wrote on 3/28/2005, 5:46 PM
The Sony UMD is very simular to the discs for the Nintendo Gamecube (which were designed by Matsushita'). They hold ~1.7gb of data. Basicly a mini-DVD you buy in the stores (I haven't seen a UMD yet, but I do know that nintendo had a special encryption made for the disk, it's technically not a DVD. I'm assuming Sony did the same thing).

Me, I don't see what's so great about it. If I wanted a mp3 player I'd buy one of those. I don't really feel like watching a movie in a screen smaller then the size of a credit card. I guess my parents tought me to entertain myself on long trips instead of being entertained by something else. :)
the_learninator wrote on 3/28/2005, 6:38 PM
this is horrible!.....we gotta buy every ps2 game we can find before psx2 ends up like sega saturn!

i bet you a dollar do a donut that Microsoft had somethin to do with this....seein how they couldn't win in the console war the easy way...they did it the dirty Microsoft way...

I'll also bet that Microsoft owns Immersion
apit34356 wrote on 3/28/2005, 7:15 PM
Microsoft corp has been in "secert talks" over the last three years over a number of issues. No real details are public, but the general "direction" seems to be about locking down multi-media center issues. Sony is viewed liked a sleeping manufacturing gaint. the development alliance with IBM, Apple about the cell cpu caught MS attention with Intel's jumping up and down. There has been a push for Apple to move their operating system to the "pc", (but that project resources have been slowing moving to the cell and advance editing concepts), but the cell cpu is more interesting to Jobs and he sees a media war with MS un-avoidable.