Eurogamer

A US company has sued Microsoft because it believes motion-sensing add-on Kinect infringes its patents.

Impulse Technology alleges Kinect infringed seven of its patents for technology that tracks users' movements and lets them play video games without a controller, Patent Arcade reports.

Impulse's patents describe a “system and method for tracking and assessing movement skills in multidimensional space".

According to the company the patents cover a “wide variety of games where the movement of a player is tracked in three dimensions… and certain exercise games where the motion of the player is tracked to effect movement of a virtual avatar, and the exertion of the user is monitored, including where the tracking of the player is done by use of a camera.”

Impulse adds Kinect game makers, including EA, Sega and Konami, as defendants. They're all guilty of making, selling and importing into the US games that infringe several of their patents, it claimed.

Now it wants a permanent injunction, damages, interest, attorneys’ fees and costs. Microsoft said it was reviewing the complaint and had no comment to make.

Kinect has sold a whopping ten million units since its November 2010 launch. It is the fastest-selling consumer electronics device of all time.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011-07-22-kinect-infringes-patents-company-claims

Probably another patent troll company, will be settled out of court pretty fast me thinks.

I'm somewhat surprised it took this long for something like this to appear. Seems like nothing can gain a level of success without being sued in some form.

Kinect obviously does, the fact that MS hasn't been paying royalties were they are obviously due just speaks to what kind of company they are, and the people calling them patent trolls how would you feel if someone stole your work which was patented and didn't pay you your fair share?

Here is a website for one of their products: http://www.trazer.com/

The lawsuit probably showed up because of MS using the technology in a way that's hindering the sales of their own product. However, 'Project Natal' was announced June 1 2009, and the Trazer brand was created June 28 2009. It almost seems like the spent a million dollars creating a product for their patents, just to be able to justify the patents in court and become profitable by winning in court.

Wow, that product is so unbelievably basic and lame that it's almost funny. Makes me think you are right in that they just rushed out a product to defend their already weak sounding and software specific patents. The hardware and processing software of Kinect is likely nothing even remotly similar, and actually seems more advanced than this device in every way.

Blame retarded US patent laws for that.