http://au.gamespot.com/news/6184585.html

Sorry for the gamespot link but this is possible one of the stupidest things to be sued for. 

This is not a problem for Sony or Nintendo. Their lawyers can surely rip apart a lawsuit like this while having their breakfast. Prior art alone should be enough here.

This will end well.

A few things strike me strange about this.

No Microsoft.

Australian site reporting it.

No mention as to the previous technology being used (in other words, didn't Logitech do this).

It also points out that the idea of patent squatting needs to be seriously examined.

Mike from Morgantown

If i understood everything right, shouldn't the Copper Wire Inc. (or what was it) be sueing every company that uses Bluetooth to connect devices, since they all use the ID when connecting with other devices.

"Copper Innovations Group is seeking damages plus interest, legal fees, and an injunction permanently prohibiting Sony, Nintendo, or their agents from infringing upon the patent."

It's totally fake. No moron in his right mind would actually try to bar them from using it when there's so much potential profit to be made. If he had a real case, he'd be working on royalties, not stopping its use.

Just look at the math: There are nearly 20 million wii's and 9 million PS3s, if, on average, each gamer got roughly 2 controllers per console, that's 58 million controllers, in just ONE year.

Just $.05 on every Wiimote and PS3 controller and he's got a minimum of $2.9 million dollars coming in EVERY YEAR.

I believe these are the relative patents:

http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5485171.html
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5640152.html

Those patents seem to describe some sort of trackpad, not exactly what the Wiimote and Sixaxis do. I didn't see anything related to motion sensors, just pressure-sensitive potentometers.

COULD be similar to the tech in the Wii balance board, though.

The patent mentioned in the article is on the automatic configuration of the control devices, something USB has been doing for QUITE some time.  Heck, ethernet has been doing something similar for a VERY long time itself. 

 that'd most likely be because the person who wrote the OP is from australia, and sites like gamespot/ign automatically divert our traffic through .au servers... the article would also be up on the 'normal' gamespot site

@Grey Acumen: WTF, you're in debt?
That was US patent, so it's not for nearly 20M Wiis and nearly 9M PS3:s. Only the quantity sold in US. Someone else may have the same patent in somewhere else or you may not even be able to patent it somewhere else.
The reason why the companies are always preventing the sales, is because the company sued will be more willing to pay/more willing to take the sueing company more seriously. This also relates to my next point:
@GA&Halil: The reason why US companies are sueing foreign companies is because they're hoping that the companies will settle instead of going into court (which is pretty common). The US system doesn't seem to make sense and it's very expensive to start fighting without guarantees of you actually winning the case, so it's much more cheaper to pay than go to court and then pay (for example with the Immersion case, M$ paid a lot less than Sony because the forementioned settled it without going into court). The thing is, that the companies hope the foreign companies, who aren't familiar with the US system, get scared and pay them and since sueing is the national sport in the US, it's more than preffered to sue someone.

@Katilian: I think those weren't the patents mentioned, since the article was talking about configuration. Although, i could be wrong.

@Coglestop: Like i earlier said, what was mentioned in the article, were something that Bluetooth does.