任天堂、ソニー、マイクロソフトが特許侵害で提訴

Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft all sued over game controllers
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070110-8588.html

Fenner Investments filed a lawsuit against all three companies last week,
alleging that they were in violation of the company’s 6,297,751 patent
for a “low-voltage joystick port interface.”

The joystick port case concerns a patent filed in 1998 and granted in 2001.

While most integrated circuits had previously run at 5V,
the inventors believed that newer circuits would run at lower voltages.

“Therefore,” says the patent filing,
“a low-power port is needed to interface the conventional 5 Volt joystick device with a lower-Volt integrated circuit.”

Fenner apparently thinks that this particular port interface has been replicated by all three of the major console manufacturers.

任天堂、ソニー、マイクロソフトのコントローラが、
Fennerという企業が持っている特許に触れるとのこと。

低電圧で動作するデバイスを動かす為のインターフェイスが、
特許侵害にあたるんだそうで。