Surely Sony and Microsoft can also be sued...? The PS3 has pressure sensitive buttons all over the thing!

"a patent for a regular-looking game controller with analogue pressure sensors."

You mean .. with .. buttons?

McCreevy's at it again, he's trying to reduce the innovation test needed to determine if a patent represents a new invention and widening patents to software and business processes. Bringing patent trolling to EU.

Specifically, he's trying to slot in ' AS A WHOLE' to the patent wording.

So they can make ever more bullshit inventions simply by adding extra clauses until they find something that hasn't been patented.You invent a cold fusion, a patent troll patents 'cold fusion used to power houses' and blocks your invention for use in powering houses.

Then there's the computer trick, you can't patent software, you can't patent business processes or pure maths or discoveries.... but with the new McCreevy text you can just tack on something else to make it patentable.

I patent x+1 used in a ballot counting machine....

I patent handshake transactions as used in the financial industry....

So Symbian recently patented late loading of dll's thereby undermining the whole computer industry with every PC late loading their device drivers that way. (Which idiot didn't know we late load dlls for every driver?)

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/03/19/patents_software_online/

If they are found to not be able to patent software, they'll simply tack on 'late loading dlls in a phone' and 'late loading dlls in a pc', ... to make it patentable again.

In typical McCreevy style, he's agreed this change in a treating with the USA, bypassing the EU law making process and taking his orders direct from Washington.

Being a family type organisation, I know they don't want the bad press but is $20M really going to cause Nintendo any problems?

They should get thrown out of court unless they can prove that they actually developed and retailed a competing product. The lawsuit should represent losses that they can prove (or even explain) that they have incurred. Otherwise it's just too easy to patent squat, and simply register patents for whatever captures the imagination and in the vaguest terms possible, for a product that you've no chance or intention of ever building.

I might just go an register a patent for a "thing" that "does stuff".

I had read elsewhere that the ruling was over the Wavebird controller for the GameCube.

IIRC a lot of patent infringement cases are brought before Texan courts which have shown a greater tendency to side with the plaintiff.

Anyone able to confirm this or shall I put it down to false recollection under the influence of eau de meths?

So by "analogue pressure sensors" it seems it's the analogue triggers that are the target of this suit. I'd have thought the neGcon controller that Namco made for the PS1 would have qualified as prior art (since Anascape's patents are dated from '97 onwards and the neGcon is from around the PS1's launch in '94).

More can be found on the neGcon here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negcon

As far as I know only the playstation and controllers have analogue buttons (triggers in the xbox case). The gamecube controller had abxy (or whatever) that were purely digital, they had two clicks in the shoulder buttons, but I think they're digital, they only have 2 sensitivities.