Let's Make Nintendo Aware of Johnny Lee!

[Dryden]

Grey Acumen said:

alpha_dk said:
@dryden:

This is not now in the public domain. In order to get this idea in the public domain, he would need to do an expensive patent search, patent it, and then put the patent into the public domain (or, really, offer a non-exclusive, royalty-free, irrevokable blanket patent to everyone on the planet). As it stands, if it is not yet patented, someone could walk into the patent office tomorrow, EVEN THOUGH he has already released this video, and patent this idea instead of him and thereby receive a patent for it. At this point, they would be able to sue anyone but him for patent violation, unless they have a documented earlier use of this technique to claim prior art; you cannot use someone else's prior art as your prior art, except to try and convince a judge that its an obvious extension of previous work to an expert in the field, which would be a hard thing to prove.

So in conclusion, IANAL:TINLA, but I wouldn't go around implementing this tech just yet and think you're safe... it in no way is in the public domain.

Um, I'm not totally certain about that. Because he already has teh video out demonstrating that he's done this himself, and can provide documentation as to how the process is done, he would likely be able to contest any patents made by anyone else. that's how the patent office used to be, but anymore, I'm fairly certain that documentation of the actual development process is more important than just when you get to the patent office.

The issue with patent applications in the US is that virtually anyone can file and be awarded a patent, then the burden of proof falls on a challenger to refute the original claim on grounds of  obviousness, the existance of a preceeding patent, prior art, or some such. It's exponentially more expensive for a second company to challenge an existing patent than for the first company to come forward and stake a claim to a new territory. In those respects, alpha_dk is absolutely correct: Johnny Lee demonstrating these methods does not invalidate Nintendo patenting them tomorrow.

But I do contend that Johnny Lee breaking down new walls with his work and giving these ideas to the public does move us a step closer towards building a foundation of Wii Remote enabled technologies being open and available. Without knowing what Nintendo has up their sleeves, it's impossible to say.

My point though, is these are applications that I hope Nintendo, Sony, Microsoft, and everybody else will someday be able to use. I would be just as concerned about new input methods being "controlled" by Nintendo just as if they were owned by anyone else. The Sony/Immersion mess regarding rumble is just one example where the customers wound up being the biggest losers in the whole deal.