Patent Threatens Wii Controllers

A court ruling earlier this week could ban the sale of certain Nintendo Wii and GameCube videogame controllers. U.S. District Judge Ron Clark denied Nintendo’s request for a new trial in a case posed by Anascape Ltd. seeking a halt to the game maker’s alleged activities.

Texas-based Anascape is set to receive $21 million in the suit that named not only Nintendo, but also Sony and Microsoft. Unlike Nintendo, however, Sony and Microsoft chose to settle with Anascape out of court, avoiding the present situation.

Should Nintendo take no action, sales of Nintendo Wii Classic Controllers and all GameCube controllers would be immediately halted. But the games maker is set to see that it not happen.

“Nintendo was already planning to appeal this case to the Federal Circuit court,”Nintendo spokesman Charlie Scibetta said in an email to Bloomberg. “The recent ruling by the trial court does not impact that decision.”

The Anascape patents pertinent to the case include U.S. Patent Numbers 5,999,084; 6,102,802; 6,135,886; 6,208,271; 6,222,525; 6,343,991; 6,344,791; 6,347,997; 6,351,205; 6,400,303; 6,563,415; and 6,906,700. The patents include details on a technology to control six types of motions with the analog sticks.

The loss of the GameCube controllers is of minimal impact to Nintendo, as production has ceased for all previous generation hardware. The Wii Classic Controller, however, is important to Nintendo strategy as many of its downloadable games from the Wii Shop Channel command a more traditional control scheme.

Interestingly, the Wii Remote and Nunchuk – which are the main controllers for the Wii console – are not affected by the suit when not attached to the Wii Classic controller. The Nunchuk has the same analog stick as the Wii Classic controller.