Comments on: Jury slaps Sony with $82 million verdict

A jury finds that Sony's PlayStation unit infringed on two patents owned by force-feedback specialist Immersion.

[Fray9]

Yet another..

Yet another company making a living off the courts and patents that shouldnt have been granted in the first place.

Controllers that shake and vibrate.. woo.. took a lot of brain power to figure THAT one out, right?

C'mon thats even more obvious than clicking twice to perform a different function than when you click once.

[zaz.net]

But patents are critical

Patents are critical to ensure that a company can market an idea and how they impliment it in the marketplace. Without the right to patent most inovation would stop as we know it today.

The big problem with a patent case and a jury is that most consumers and jurers do not understand how patents work. They further do not understand the technology that has a patent applied. There are many ways to provide "force feedback" to a user via a shaking joystick.

If Sony does not impliment the method that is covered by the patent, then there is no patent infringement. If however, Immersion has covered the Sony method in their patent, then they are entitled to losses. I doubt that an award over 80 million is deserved and in such a case where the technology has been distributed to millions of customers a license should be forced by the courts.

It seems from Immersions statements that they intend not to license the patent to Sony. This would seem like a way to extort more money from other companies in pre-litigation negotiations. ie: Pay our license fee, or pay for it anyway and lose your right to produce the product.

Unfortunately not all forms of extortion are illegal, and that's the biggest downfall to patents. IMHO patents shuold be changed to require a marketing and licensing mechanism.

Intel owns a lot of patents on chip technology that would have made for great processors. They filed them away and nobody was able to build on the technology. They did this of course to keep their products dominant in the marketplace, but it is an example of bad use of patents.

Patents should be used to protect their owner when selling a product based on the patent. Hopefully our lawmakers in the US can change the patent law to reflect this in the next decade or two.

[Fray9]

Yet another..

Yet another company making a living off the courts and patents that shouldnt have been granted in the first place.

Controllers that shake and vibrate.. woo.. took a lot of brain power to figure THAT one out, right?

C'mon thats even more obvious than clicking twice to perform a different function than when you click once.

[zaz.net]

But patents are critical

Patents are critical to ensure that a company can market an idea and how they impliment it in the marketplace. Without the right to patent most inovation would stop as we know it today.

The big problem with a patent case and a jury is that most consumers and jurers do not understand how patents work. They further do not understand the technology that has a patent applied. There are many ways to provide "force feedback" to a user via a shaking joystick.

If Sony does not impliment the method that is covered by the patent, then there is no patent infringement. If however, Immersion has covered the Sony method in their patent, then they are entitled to losses. I doubt that an award over 80 million is deserved and in such a case where the technology has been distributed to millions of customers a license should be forced by the courts.

It seems from Immersions statements that they intend not to license the patent to Sony. This would seem like a way to extort more money from other companies in pre-litigation negotiations. ie: Pay our license fee, or pay for it anyway and lose your right to produce the product.

Unfortunately not all forms of extortion are illegal, and that's the biggest downfall to patents. IMHO patents shuold be changed to require a marketing and licensing mechanism.

Intel owns a lot of patents on chip technology that would have made for great processors. They filed them away and nobody was able to build on the technology. They did this of course to keep their products dominant in the marketplace, but it is an example of bad use of patents.

Patents should be used to protect their owner when selling a product based on the patent. Hopefully our lawmakers in the US can change the patent law to reflect this in the next decade or two.