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Comment by rob74 | Hacker News Reader

Yay, bring on the patent trolls! I wonder what's so different between vibration in a controller and vibration in a phone that prevents them from suing Apple, Samsung, Google et al.? Because if the patents are just about the idea of giving haptic feedback to players via the controller, I'm asking myself why all the billion-$ companies involved preferred to roll over and license the "technology" rather than actually going to court and trying to get the patents invalidated instead...

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Whilst this is purely speculation on my part, I have always assumed the reason they settle rather than go to court is because they don't actually want the patents invalidated. The patents serve as a barrier to entry into the market. Had Microsoft - for instance - gone to court, and had the patents invalidated, Valve would not have been sued now.

This discourages competition from smaller outlets, and thus allows the big players fewer competitors. Though, again, pure speculation on my part.

> Whilst this is purely speculation on my part, I have always assumed the reason they settle rather than go to court is because they don't actually want the patents invalidated. The patents serve as a barrier to entry into the market. Had Microsoft - for instance - gone to court, and had the patents invalidated, Valve would not have been sued now.

And importantly, they don't want their own patents invalidated. They don't want legal precedents that weaken their own IP rights.

I think it also promotes a culture of "bullshit patents are good, just pay up and move on." Which aligns very well with large companies' large bullshit patent portfolios.

Big players don't have to be malicious in this particular case. There are other financial incentives for big players not to go to court. For once because patent troll might block sales of particular device / service during litigation. Also because in a big companies such decisions are taken by their own legal departments that might have skewed interests and KPIs.

Also, could someone like Microsoft or Sony point this company to sue the aftermarket manufactures for controllers for their products. Thus selling more first party stuff.

Yay, bring on the patent trolls! I wonder what's so different between vibration in a controller and vibration in a phone that prevents them from suing Apple, Samsung, Google et al.?

Nothing's different: https://ir.immersion.com/news-releases/news-release-details/...

Ok, I stand corrected... so this is a "patent pool" similar to those covering video compression etc., just much more trivial? I really wonder how you can have "2,600 issued or pending patents" for touch feedback technology. Except if they're including patents on e.g. the idea of making a touch screen feel like a physical keyboard, so they can immediately sue the poor soul who actually manages to pull it off...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine_patent

> Except if they're including patents on e.g. the idea of making a touch screen feel like a physical keyboard, so they can immediately sue the poor soul who actually manages to pull it off...

You can only patent actual inventions, not ideas. So you can't just patent "touch screens which feel like a physical keyboard", but how your specific implementation of that works.

Sure you can, companies patent ideas constantly and then extort other companies with money because invalidating a crappy patent is extremely expensive from legal perspective.

Don't mix theory and reality.

You certainly can. What you can't do is patent and be 100% sure that it won't ever get invalidated in a challenge. But that never happens, because the incentive landscape makes it more attractive to licence: a company licencing instead of challenging passes the buck to its competitors, and even more importantly to potential future competitors. Patent troll companies are effectively offering moat-as-a-service and those moats perform just fine even if they are just imaginary moats.

Tell that to everyone sued with the Magnavox patent.

my partner has a patent for the idea of adding texture to a glass touchscreen. she got this patent while throwing ideas at the wall in a meeting paypal has to just come up with patent ideas

Specially when the prior art is old and even more modern examples are from 1997. Maybe they just fear the small chance that the sales will be stopped for a period.

Can you imagine a game controller maker being sued in 1997 for some pinball control device made in 1967?

Well patents have an expiry date.

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