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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