Oh-no-they-didn’t! Just when you were starting to find Wii consoles in local stores, Hillcrest Labs wants to take that magic away.
The company just announced that they are taking legal action to keep the Wii out of the U.S. The company is claiming patent infringement. Their statement said:
“Hillcrest Labs has filed a complaint for patent infringement with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in Washington, D.C., and a separate patent infringement suit in the U.S. District Court in Maryland against Nintendo related to the Wii video game system.”
Hillcrest holds U.S. patents 7,158,118, 7,262,760, and 7,414,611, all of which involve a handheld 3-D pointing device. They also have no. 7,139,983, which “relates to a navigation interface display system that graphically organizes content for display on a television.” Overall, the company has about 29 patents in this area, with more than 100 more pending.
Many companies, including UEI and Logitech, have licensed Hillcrest’s technology. Guess who isn’t one of them? The company says they have love for Nintendo, but not its freewheeling ways. They aren’t making any other comments at this time.
Ridiculous. No one will let them stop the Wii from coming to the U.S.
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Is it just me or have patent claims against tech software companies started to border on ridiculous? Maybe we need our legislators to seriously reconsider our patent system. Most recently it has come to light that Microsoft patented pageup/pagedown buttons in 2005. One has to wonder whether patent protection of this kind encourages or discourages innovation...or maybe we just need more highly specialized people in the patent office to put a stop to overly broad, not-really-novel claims.