Philips Sues Nintendo Over Patents

Ice Arceus

Ice Arceus

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So apparently, Philips has sued Nintendo for infringing on two of the company's patents. Philips currently seeks damages and wants to issue an authoritative order that prohibits Nintendo from creating, using, or selling the Wii U and related products of the console in the United States.

Two of the patents that Philips claims Nintendo infringed upon:
  • Virtual Body Control Device
  • User Interface System Based on Pointing Device

Full article:
If you were getting all jazzed about the prospect of playing the much-loved Mario Kart 8 on Nintendo's Wii U console, you best be purchasing one quickly. Philips has sued Nintendo in a Delaware court, claiming that the gaming firm has infringed on two of the company's patents.
Consequently, Philips is seeking damages for the infringement and an injunction that bans Nintendo from "making, using, selling, offering for sale, and importing within the United States" its Wii U console and related products.
Philips claims that Nintendo's products infringe two of its patents: U.S. Patent No. 6,285,379, for a "Virtual Body Control Device," and U.S. Patent No. 8,537,231, for a "User Interface System Based on Pointing Device."
In Philips's lawsuit, the company alleges that Nintendo was first made aware of the company's '379 patent via a 2011 letter from Philips' Susumu Tsugaru to Nintendo's Toshiro Hibino.
A Philips spokesman told the AP that Philips and Nintendo had allegedly been attempting to negotiate a licensing arrangement, to no avail.
As for the '231 patent, Philips claims to have provided Nintendo notice of the patent "no later than the filing date" of its complaint — not years prior, as it indicates with the '379 patent.
"Philips is a world-renowned company that has expended enormous efforts in recent decades to achieve advancements in research and development in various technological fields. Philips has engaged in the field of applied electronics and has conducted research in areas relating to visual representation of spatial processes and to automatic processes," reads Philips's complaint.
"The present patents-in-suit stem from these fields of research and development and claims protection for an interactive system for which a user can remotely control devices in an intuitive manner. Such intuitive remote control mechanisms are used in present-day home video game consoles."
Philips is asking for a jury trial for all of its claims.

What are your thoughts on this situation?
 
What is Phillips trying to do, destroy Nintendo!?!?

Other than patents, I don't think Phillips has a very strong case...
 
im sure Nintendo can afford better lawyers OR Nintendo is forced to pay them alot of $ to get them to go away
 
Patent trolls. Nothing more, nothing less.
A "user interface based on pointing," seriously...
The funny thing is, Philips' stock (PHG) took a nose dive after this was announced.
 
Ice Arceus said:
Philips currently seeks damages and wants to issue an authoritative order that prohibits Nintendo from creating, using, or selling the Wii U and related products of the console in the United States.
Click to expand...

Well assuming this doesn't effect sales for the 3DS especially since Nintendo is shutting down their Wi-Fi Connection services on their old DS handhelds because Pokemon X and Y isn't selling enough copies worldwide aside from not being able to pay money to keep the old servers open, the Wii U was destined to fail so I don't know why Philips is wasting their time suing Nintendo over a dead console when Nintendo as a company just recently lost 46.4 billion yen which is the equivalent of $457 Million in the last few months of 2014 where most of their profits are going toward PC Gaming and Valve's Steam.
 
As a question, who is Phillips? Is he a man or is it a gaming company?
 
Card Slinger J said:
Ice Arceus said:
Philips currently seeks damages and wants to issue an authoritative order that prohibits Nintendo from creating, using, or selling the Wii U and related products of the console in the United States.
Click to expand...

Well assuming this doesn't effect sales for the 3DS especially since Nintendo is shutting down their Wi-Fi Connection services on their old DS handhelds because Pokemon X and Y isn't selling enough copies worldwide aside from not being able to pay money to keep the old servers open, the Wii U was destined to fail so I don't know why Philips is wasting their time suing Nintendo over a dead console when Nintendo as a company just recently lost 46.4 billion yen which is the equivalent of $457 Million in the last few months of 2014 where most of their profits are going toward PC Gaming and Valve's Steam.
Click to expand...
You have no idea what you are writing, do you?
 
Sigh, well this is embarrassing. Anyway based on what Athena said earlier, Philips was responsible for the horrible CD-i video game console from the early 90's that produced one of the worst Zelda games in video game history so they had at least one video game console before but that's beside the point. The point I was trying to get across was similar to what beebahboo and Brave Vesperia mentioned earlier in this thread that Philips is wasting their time on this pointless lawsuit, it's just that I was over analyzing the situation a bit. Apparently my recent assumption was wrong, I thought I knew what I was talking about earlier but unfortunately I wasn't. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding Teal and to everyone else please don't take it personally. :(
 
As beebahboo said, this looks like Philips is just being a troll. They're trying to scare Nintendo into giving them some money over some random technicality in one of their patents. I obviously don't know the details of the patents, but the fact that Philips wants to prevent the selling of a major console just sounds like a scare tactic to freak the public (or potentially Nintendo) out. I wouldn't be concerned--again, I'm betting the only reason this is even getting publicized (as I'm sure Nintendo has to deal with lawsuits every day, small or big) is because of the ridiculous over-the-top demands that Philips are asking for.
 
Didn't someone threaten Microsoft's Xbox 1 in this manner too? I think it must have been a few months ago by now.

I sorta deal with patents in biotech and while they're a pain in the arse, I don't think products ever get taken off of the market because of them. It'll just amount to a payout from Ninty at the most.
 
Well I guess that means I'm not going to buy any more Philips products, not that I really ever did anyway. >.>
 
These patent things have gotten out of hand and are crazy abused. The either never go anywhere or they get settled.

It's a good thing we can stop this madness once and for all since Stephen Colbert is patenting the act of obtaining a patent: http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/videos/4a4ahs/amazon-s-audacious-photography-patent
 
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