Originally posted by IGN

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Not a week seems to go by without a lawsuit. This week's legal woes come to Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony courtesy of a suit filed by Texas-based Fenner Investments. The suit claims all three infringed on the company's 1998 patent for a "low-voltage port interface" according to Gamasutra.

While the famed Immersion lawsuit focused on force-feedback technology, this most recent suit is concerned with joystick ports. The lawsuit seeks damages and an injunction against the big three.

The merit behind the suit is unclear as of the filing. The patent summary reads: "The joystick port interface according the present invention is a low power port which interfaces a typical 5 Volt joystick peripheral device with a lower power computer port. The low-voltage joystick port interface includes a bidirectional buffer circuit and a pulse generator which, together, generate a digital pulse signal, representing a joystick coordinate position, based on an input analog measurement signal."

It remains to be seen what the next patent lawsuit might be, but we're certain another will come within the next month.

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Originally posted by NSNick

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Umm, sounds like it could be a patent on the port used to transfer analog signal?

I dunno.

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Originally posted by DLPotts on digg.com

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Few things to point out here. 1) I don't know who filed the infringement on this patent. 2) I am one of the inventors of this patent (DLPotts from Royersford, PA). I have no idea how they expect this to fly in court. Why? The idea of the patent directly ties to JOYSTICK PORTS on PC's, and NOTHING else. The Joystick port on the PC is a 5volt open collector port that uses sampled time to determine if the potentiometer has moved or not. Eventually the semiconductors involved dropped to 3.3 volt and thus the Joystick port would not function any more. The Patent reflects how the port had to be modified to accept a current joystick (ones designed to run on 5 volt) and still be accurate. The idea behind the design was not to stop people from inventing a low voltage joystick such as Nintendo, Sony and MS have done, but a way to use the (then current) joysticks in future systems.

Since none of the game consoles involved actually use "PC JOYSTICK" ports (they have created their own ports), and they are not interfacing to the analog PC joysticks of the time; there is no way that this would ever stand up in court.

I would also like to give a shout out to Jalil Fadavi of this patent too; he lost his battle to cancer a few months back.. He was a great man.

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Originally posted by NSNick

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Their joystick was digital, not analog. Also, the bidirectional port could imply that the port is capable of sending information to the controller vis-a-vis memory cards, rumble, etc.

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